Blog: Citizen Science Projects, People, and Perspectives
On the list of reasons to watch The Rachel Maddow Show, one wouldn’t ordinarily expect to find “lessons in ornithology” near the top. Well, after Monday night’s show, that’s exactly what viewers got! In the video clip below, Maddow explains how she was recently walking her dog in a western Massachusetts forest when she heard … Read more “Is Rachel Maddow a citizen scientist?”
Categories: Animals, Birds, Computers & Technology, In the News, Nature & Outdoors
Scientists all over the northeast want to know more about where native owls live and roam. By keeping mice and other small rodents in check, owls perform a critical function in suburban ecosystems. But researchers don’t yet understand why owls survive well in some suburban areas and not in others. So, all you citizen scientists … Read more “Night owls needed”
Categories: Animals, Birds, Nature & Outdoors
Is your yard for the birds? This fall, Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology will unveil YardMap, a citizen science project that asks participants to map their yards and green spaces to help researchers better understand where birds live. The project provides a Google satellite image of your yard (or another green space of your choice), … Read more “Map an important bird habitat: your own backyard”
Categories: Birds, Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Nature & Outdoors
Can I pick your brain for a minute? Next week I’m going to be part of a panel discussion on the topic of citizen science. It’s part of a joint conference of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the Geological Society of America titled “Earth and Space Science: Making Connections in Education and Public Outreach.” To … Read more “What makes a good citizen science project–for you?”
Categories: Astronomy & Space, Citizen Science, Geology & Earth Sciences
Charlie Mydlarz is working on a fascinating PhD thesis at the University of Salford near Manchester, England. He’s studying how everyday sounds make us feel. Did you know that our human desire to be around other people draws us to the sounds of “hustle and bustle?” Or that insistent and annoying noise can raise blood … Read more “Listen to the sounds around you”
Categories: Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment
Recently, my pal at Live Science.com, Dave Brody, produced this video news piece about the results of a fascinating experiment involving fireflies. Scientists at the University of Connecticut have discovered that males in a common species of fireflies synchronize their flashing patterns to attract females. In dense fields or woods, the mass, synchronized flashing patterns … Read more “One firefly mystery solved, another needs your help”
Categories: Citizen Science, Insects, Nature & Outdoors
While in New York last week, I dropped in at the Hayden Planetarium for a real treat: an old-fashioned sky show. This was not your typical overwrought, highly digitized, celebrity narrated, long-on-glitz and short-on-insights production number that planetariums feel they have to create these days in order to get the public’s attention. This was a … Read more “I love an old-fashioned sky show”
Categories: Astronomy & Space
“Everybody have ants?” That’s Kelly Herbinson, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, training high school students in the art of collecting ants for the Bay Area Ant Survey, one of the Academy’s citizen science projects. (You’ll find a description in our Project Finder.) The project and the problem ant that participants most often … Read more “Got ants? Citizen scientists do”
Categories: Citizen Science, Insects
An important new citizen science project turned up in our database the other day—and it urgently needs volunteers. MoGO, short for Mobile Gulf Observatory, is an iPhone app that enlists volunteers to record and report the damage of the Gulf Coast oil spill on the region’s wildlife and environment. It was created by researchers at … Read more “Citizen scientists needed to track oil damage–by phone”
Categories: Animals, Birds, Citizen Science, Computers & Technology, Ecology & Environment
A few days ago, Bruce Lewenstein, Professor of Science Communication at Cornell University, sent this note to me: I’ve just returned from several weeks in China, where I was giving lectures on science communication at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ graduate school and in other venues. A story about the lectures ran in the science … Read more ““Ni Hao,” to our new friends in China.”
Categories: Citizen Science, In the News, Science Education Standards, Science Policy
