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Tag Archives: citizen

Fostering a Sense of Place: Citizen Science for Conservation Decision Making

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Caitlin Mandeville Leave a comment

Volunteers collect data as part of the Centennial Saguaro Survey in Arizona, USA. (Image credit: US National Park Service, CC0, Image Cropped)

When it comes to making conservation decisions, science is just the first step. Putting scientific research to work addressing conservation challenges requires collaboration between researchers, stakeholders, and the public. And increasingly, researchers point to citizen science as a way to engage the public in conservation.

Opinions

Placing a Camera Trap for Beginners in 5 Easy Steps

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Sam Perrin One comment

Image Credit: Pikrepo, CC0 1.0, Image Cropped

If you haven’t yet heard, April is Citizen Science month, so we’re posting a spate of articles on how people can help out and contribute to science without spending months making tiny adjustments at the whims of peer reviewers! This week Sammy Mason (of the UK’s MammalWeb project) and I have put together a checklist for anyone who wants to organise their own camera trap.

For those not in the know, a camera trap is essentially a camera placed out in the wild which records the movement of local animal species whenever they pass by. It’s a fantastic way to document your local wildlife, and it’s a huge help in collating important data about our wildlife. If you’re not convinced, check out the article below.

Bringing Wild Mammals to the Classroom: The MammalWeb Program

So for those of you who would life to set up a camera trap, let’s get stuck into what you have to consider.

Opinions

What Does Citizen Science Mean To You?

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Caitlin Mandeville 2 comments

April 2020 is Global Citizen Science Month. (Image credit: Citizen Science Association. CC-BY 4.0, Image Cropped)

What does citizen science mean to you? If you asked fifty people this question, you’d probably get fifty different answers. Citizen science—or, as it is sometimes called, community science—is increasingly common in scientific research, revolutionizing the way that many types of data are collected, but at the same time it can feel distinctly personal to those that participate in it.

Snapping a photo of a backyard tree each day to document the change in seasons … collecting a water quality sample from your neighborhood stream and sending it to a local lab for analysis … swiping through photos of outer space on your smartphone and identifying patterns among formations of stars—the experience of citizen science looks different for each person who participates in it.

Opinions

10 Great SciComm Twitter Games To Brighten Your Quarantine

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Sam Perrin 2 comments

This month, in line with Global Citizen Science Month, we’ll have a special focus on all things citizen science. For those of you who are unaware of the concept, it’s an initiative by SciStarter and the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, with support from the Citizen Science Association and National Geographic.

For those who haven’t heard the term before, citizen (or community) science is essentially an all-encompassing term for scientific research and learning that is conducted outside of traditional spheres. It can encompass anything, from your kid collecting bugs in traps in the backyard, to global apps like iNaturalist. While Caitlin will have an in-depth overview of exactly what citizen science entails next Monday, we’ll kick the month off by looking at revolutionary technology that has allowed non-scientists to participate in scientific research worldwide – social media.

Specifically Twitter. One of the most enjoyable things about Twitter’s scientific community has been the advent of SciComm games. These are (often weekly) posts by scientists from different fields, which ask fellow Twittererers to identify, find or pick apart different aspects of an ecosystem. They’re a great introduction to taxonomy and field identification, and they’re super-easy to get involved in.

So below I’ve listed (with the help of Twitter) 10 of the most fun Twitter games out there.

Opinions

Donald Hobern: Cataloguing the Planet’s DNA

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Sam Perrin 2 comments

I spoke with GBIF’s executive secretary and amateur lepidopterist Donald Hobern about how DNA barcoding fits into modern conservation and ecology (Image Credit: Donald Hobern, CC BY-2.0, Image Cropped)

DNA barcoding has revolutionised science. Ask anyone working in evolution or taxonomy these days what the biggest changes are the they’ve seen in their discipline, chances are it’ll be to do with gene sequencing and DNA processing. So when the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) Conference came to Trondheim last week, I jumped at the opportunity to learn more about the behind the scenes work that goes into cataloguing the DNA barcodes of life on earth.

I sat down with Donald Hobern, Executive Secretary of iBOL and former Executive Secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Director of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). Donald joined iBOL just as they launched BIOSCAN, a $180 million dollar program which aims to accelerate the cataloguing of the world’s biodiversity in DNA form. We spoke about BIOSCAN, the technology behind bringing occurrence and genetic data together, and how the work iBOL and GBIF do ties into the bigger picture of global conservation and sustainability.

The Forefront

Modernising Ecological Data Management: Reflections from the Living Norway Seminar

Posted on June 13, 2019 by Sam Perrin Leave a comment

Ecological data is constantly being collected worldwide, but how accessible is it? (Image Credit: GBIF, CC BY 4.0, Image Cropped)

This week Trondheim played host to Living Norway, a Norwegian collective that aims to promote FAIR data use and management. It might sound dry from an ecological perspective, but I was told I’d see my supervisor wearing a suit jacket, an opportunity too preposterous to miss. While the latter opportunity was certainly a highlight, the seminar itself proved fascinating, and underlined just how important FAIR data is for ecology, and science in general. So why is it so important, what can we do to help, and why do I keep capitalising FAIR?

Conference Reviews

Erica McAlister: On the Appreciation of Flies

Posted on April 25, 2019 by Sam Perrin 4 comments

Dr. Erica McAlister of the British Natural History Museum recently released The Secret Life of Flies, an exploration of the more fascinating side of the fly (Image Credit: Erica McAlister, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)