Blog: Citizen Science Projects, People, and Perspectives
From moon monitoring to stargazing to salamander sleuthing, SciStarter brings you citizen science projects you can do in the dark. GLOBE at Night Within a couple of generations in the U.S., only the national parks will have dark enough skies to see the Milky Way. Light pollution disrupts the habits of animals and wastes energy … Read more “Citizen Science… After Hours”
Categories: Apps, Astronomy & Space, Biology
Science endeavors to be a collaborative and open process. Unfortunately, it can be challenging for independent citizen scientists to share their data or publish their research findings. “Despite the quality of their work, competent amateurs and citizen scientists are not well-represented in the research literature,” explains Dr. Sheldon Greaves co-founder and Executive Director of the … Read more “Open science: resources for sharing and publishing citizen science research”
Categories: Citizen Science, Computers & Technology
Recently researchers at Michigan State University have been turning their attention to how we study plant photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the biological process by which plants and algae convert light into storable energy for growth and survival. Quantifying photosynthesis levels can reveal a lot about plant health. For example how efficient is the plant in capturing … Read more “Photosynq: Plugging into Photosynthesis”
Categories: Apps, Biology, Citizen Science, CitSci Research, Computers & Technology
This project is featured in our Back to School 2013 round-up. Imagine what it would mean if our knowledge about the many life forms on Earth – of animals, plants, fungi, protists, and bacteria – could be gathered together and made available to everyone – anywhere – at a moment’s notice. Currently, this information is … Read more “Browse the Encyclopedia of Life”
Categories: Citizen Science
The first time I ever saw the Perseids, I was 15 years old. I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night (without telling my parents, of course) and found the darkest spot at the park nearby. What followed was one of the most awesome sights I had witnessed up until then: … Read more “Proceed to the Perseids with NASA’s Meteor Counter”
Categories: Apps, Astronomy & Space, Citizen Science
Calling all water monitoring groups! It is time for the annual Secchi Dip-In. From now until July 22, volunteer and professional water monitoring groups are being asked to take transparency measurements in a local body of water. A secchi disk is a common tool for measuring water turbidity, or water cloudiness. Turbidity is caused by … Read more “The Secchi Dip-In”
Categories: Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Geology & Earth Sciences, Nature & Outdoors, Ocean & Water
Do you just “get” numbers? Or have they always left you a little baffled? Now you can test this observation and quantify your number sense. Number sense is our “gut knowledge” of numbers’ magnitude, their relationships, and even basic arithmetic. Number sense is thought to be innate, potently present as early as infancy. But while … Read more “Know your numbers”
Categories: Education
At SciStarter, we’re see exciting new citizen science opportunities with the development of new online tools and platforms. We’re trying to understand and map out the useful features of different platforms, and know that many of you have questions, experiences, and insights about this topic as well. Over the next few days, we’re interested in … Read more “What tools and technologies can power new frontiers for citizen science?”
Categories: Citizen Science
We couldn’t have asked for a better citizen science project to start off October, a month often associated with Halloween and all things spooky. Introducing Bat Detective, a project that enlists citizen scientists to screen sound recordings of bats to classify their distinct calls. Bats are nocturnal, making them very difficult to spot with the … Read more “Become a Bat Detective”
Categories: Animals, Bats, Biology, Citizen Science, Climate & Weather, Ecology & Environment, Insects, Nature & Outdoors
The U.S. Geological Survey invites citizen scientists to send information about landslides in their neighborhoods to the Landslide Hazards Program for inclusion in their national database. … Read more
Categories: Citizen Science, Climate & Weather, Computers & Technology, Geology & Earth Sciences, Nature & Outdoors, Science Education Standards
