Author: ian

What lives along New Zealand’s shoreline? Find out, one square metre at a time, with Marine Metre Squared. Looking for more summertime citizen science projects? Find them here. Every now and again I come across a citizen science project that inspires me. Don’t get me wrong—most of the people I interview, whether they are counting […]

This post is part of Exploring a Culture of Health, a citizen science series brought to you by Discover Magazine, SciStarter and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serving as an ally to help Americans work together to build a national Culture of Health that enables everyone to lead healthier lives now and for generations to come. At first glance, […]

Celebrate National Moth Week by photographing moths to help scientists predict and manage moth populations. Interested in more moth and butterfly citizen science projects?  We’ve got you covered! In 1991 John Pickering (everyone calls him Pick) switched from doing agriculture and health work to the one thing that had been his original motivation for pursuing […]

Save the sablefish (also known as black cod) and help scientists by counting the fish in video clips. Want more marine-themed citizen science projects? We’ve got you covered! Scientists call it Anoplopoma fimbria, fishers might know it as the sablefish, while some chefs call it the Black Cod. Found hovering just above the muddy North […]

This post is part of Exploring a Culture of Health, a citizen science series brought to you by Discover Magazine, SciStarter and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serving as an ally to help Americans work together to build a national Culture of Health that enables everyone to lead healthier lives now and for generations to come. Nicholas Volker […]

Record plant observations and learn how changes in climate and habitat affect a plant’s lifecycle with Project Budburst. Track the phenology of plants and animals with these citizen science projects. Gardeners worldwide have their favorite sayings about when to plant, when to reap, how much rain is going to fall, or how dry it will […]

Has anyone noticed how much media coverage citizen science is getting? Bird counts, tree monitoring, bee cataloguing, water testing, ocean analyses, air sampling and star gazing—the list goes on and on. When the European Commission published an in-depth report in December of 2013 on whether or not participatory science influences policy, I thought—whoa, citizen scientists […]

Headed outside? Learn more about how you can help report invasive species with the What’s Invasive? smartphone app! Want more citizen science? There’s an app for that. I first visited Southern California in the spring. The hillsides were covered in emerald green grasses and spotted with great old Valley Oak trees—a landscape that is known […]

It’s Earth Day! Celebrate the planet we live on with these amazing environmental citizen science projects! The Earth Day Network records that in 1970 the average American was funneling leaded gas through massive V8 engine blocks, and industry was exhausting toxic smoke into the air and chemical slush into the water with little legal consequence […]

Collect and share pictures of memorable encounters with nature using the WildObs app. Want more citizen science? Don’t worry. There’s an app for that. There are nature lovers, wildlife photographers, hikers, kayakers and birdwatchers who pursue their passion every day, and most of them do so in the hope of spotting an osprey, or catching […]