Next Sunday is the most exciting day of the year for owl-lovers all over the world: Superb Owl Sunday!
This is the day when the ornithologically-inclined brave the elements to photograph owls, deploy owl nest boxes and/or, for some reason, stay indoors and watch football.
No matter how you celebrate Superb Owl Sunday, the editors at SciStarter feature the projects they’re hooting for, below!
Cognitive neuroscientist and San Francisco 49ers Gold Rush Cheerleader Kelly is heading to the Super Bowl (AGAIN! She also cheered for the Patriots!).
Kelly has as many college degrees as the 49ers have Lombardi Trophies (that would be five, so far).
In fact, 20 of the 40 current 49ers Cheerleaders are pursuing STEM careers! Learn more about Kelly and other “Science Cheerleaders,” who have diverse interests like psychology, biology, and more. Citizen science projects that correspond to Kelly’s interests include:
- Stall Catchers: With Stall Catchers, speed up the search for a Alzheimer’s cure by making annotations for researchers online.
- LingoBoingo: Kelly studied Spanish as well as science, and this program lets you play language-based games that contribute to linguistics research.
- Did You Feel It: While the West Coast is well-known for earthquakes, they occur all over the world. You can help geologists pinpoint them by joining Did You Feel It!
Or, show your pride for the Kansas City Chiefs and the beautiful state of Missouri by participating in the Lakes of Missouri project! Collect and process lake water and share the samples with the University of Missouri Limnology Laboratory to help scientists maintain the health of Missouri’s aquatic ecosystems.
Learn more about the Chiefs’ Science Cheerleaders!
Location: Missouri
No matter where you are in the world, study the night sky with projects on the Dark Skies page. The Missouri chapter of the International Dark Sky Association recently presented a global webinar about this, explaining not only how libraries in Missouri can get involved with this program, but also how anyone can do these projects. View their handouts and resources here.
Image Credit: Emily Maletz (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Location: Global
This year’s Super Bowl is in Miami, which was once home to countless, beautiful, epiphytic orchids. Today, these native flowers are rare and endangered. But the Million Orchid Challenge at Fairchild Tropical Gardens hopes to bring these orchids back, with the help of thousands of energetic citizen scientists.
Location: Florida
No Superb Owl Sunday would be complete without participating in iNaturalist’s Superb Owl photo challenge. Make your local owls international stars by sharing their pics on iNaturalist—a website and app that also helps scientists monitor wildlife populations. The most superb owl shots are shared on their FB page.
Tip: add your iNaturalist username to “Info & Settings” in your SciStarter dashboard so we can give you credit for your contributions!
Location: Global
Check out SciStarter’s online and printable monthly calendar of events and holidays linked to relevant citizen science projects.
In our new podcast episode, we spotlight the citizen science campus at North Carolina State University.
Discover more citizen science on the SciStarter calendar. Did you know your SciStarter dashboard helps you track your contributions to projects? Complete your profile to access free tools. Want even more citizen science? Check out SciStarter’s Project Finder! With citizen science projects spanning every field of research, task and age group, there’s something for everyone!
New on our syndicated blogs:
Book Review: The Field Guide to Citizen Science via Science Connected Magazine
There’s Not Enough Data on How Women Deal With Endometriosis. These Scientists are Changing That via Discover Magazine
New Year, New Resolutions via the SciStarter blog
