Amateurs have contributed remarkable scientific discoveries: a lost spacecraft, a system of exoplanets, and a new kind of purple aurora named STEVE (“an extraordinary puzzle piece in our understanding of how Earth's magnetic fields interact with charged particles in space”). They map milkweed that determines where to focus monarch habitat enhancement. People tag and monitor monarchs and uncover essential information on monarch natural history. Community science data on bioinvasion tailors species control planning and often means more effective control because the species was spotted before reaching critical biomass.
Sitting at home you can contribute to NASA studies of other planets and explore space beyond the solar system. An Antarctic scientist needs help finding Weddell seals on satellite images. If nature and space don’t thrill you, projects are available to gather public input on weather, auroras, historical documents and myriad other topics.
Using the links in this story, you can join citizen science projects, including some you’d never expect.
Special projects are scheduled for today, while later this month a competitive week long event occurs in 60 cities around the world. Other citizen science projects take place throughout the year. These projects either offer the training you need to get started, or require no prior knowledge. Just jump in!
citizen science day 2018
Today, April 14th, is the third annual Citizen Science Day and more projects than ever are planned. The event is organized through this website, which also offers links to year-round projects.
Hairy star tulip
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns spinning around us.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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The International City Nature Challenge Begins April 27
People who want to get outside and report nature can participate internationally in the third annual City Nature Challenge 2018 organized through iNaturalist (and other platforms depending on locale). Sign up here. You don’t even need to know the name of the species you photo! iNaturalist crowdsources identification of your submissions. Just upload a photo and location information.
Intriguing side note — iNaturalist is at the heart of a Google Challenge 2018 species classification competition. Caltech and Cornell Tech received Google funding to develop fine-grained visual recognition abilities — AKA computer vision that identifies species in submitted photos. Last month, iNaturalist released an image recognition app for plants and animals called Seek.
Taking part is easy — do it alone or join a group
- Find wildlife. It can be any plant, animal, fungi, slime mold, or any other evidence of life (scat, fur, tracks, shells, carcasses) found in your participating city.
- Take a picture of what you find. Be sure to note the location of the critter or plant.
- Share your observations by uploading your findings through iNaturalist or your city's chosen platform.
You don’t need to stalk the urban jungle for rare and unusual species unless that’s your joy. You could snap observations right outside your front door. Last year, of the 8,663 species documented, the most frequently reported from all 16 cities were common native and non-native animals:
- mallard (native, 595 observations);
- western honeybee (non-native, 584);
- western fence lizard (native, 460);
- American robin (native, 447); and
- fox squirrel (native in the eastern US and non-native west of the Rocky Mountains, 429).
Winning is based on the total number of observations submitted from a competing city, not the total number of different species. If you aren’t a join the group type, go it alone and independently help your city document nature. Tropical areas like Maui, Kuala Lumpur, and Mumbai have the greatest biodiversity potential, but the number of participants from each city can even this out by submitting abundant observations.
I reported the results from the previous two City Nature Challenges.
On Earth Day, Los Angeles County was announced as the winner with 10,456 observations of 1,615 species from 399 people. SF Bay Area reported 9,939 observations of 1,607 species from 491 people (note that SF reported only 8 fewer species than LA).
Last year’s winners were Dallas/Fort Worth with 24,085 observations of 2,252 species; San Francisco (23,924 / 2,386); and Los Angeles (18,448 / 2,045). The other city’s totals are listed at the previous link.
Join in Projects Throughout the Year
look for antarctic seals from your chair at home
everyone sees the Weather
space stuff
help herps
here’s steve
People participate in citizen science projects for entertainment and education and sometimes stumble into the thrill of discovering new exoplanets. But all your observations are important to science because researchers use citizen science databases. A study of eBird data usefulness in estimating avian population trends compared more than 11 million eBird lists to government data collected between 1997 and 2016. The study found that 10,000 eBird lists accurately tracked a species population as well as formal surveys. Other studies have found similar results, although the abundance of citizen science data needed depends on the study objective. Of course, the rare observation of STEVE or new exoplanets doesn’t require 10,000 reports as the scientists can just look for themselves to confirm the sighting.
While even common or weedy species are important data points, there are plenty of undescribed species waiting to be discovered by science. A study published in 2011 estimated the presence of 8,700,000 species on earth. Of these, 86% of terrestrial species and 91% in the seas have yet to be documented. A universe of discoveries waits on and beyond earth. Why not begin today?
find more projects
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There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
Marshall McLuhan