[PCA] NEWS: Citizen science & mention of USA-NPN's Project BudBurst in Nature

[Olivia Kwong]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Mark D Schwartz <mds at uwm.edu>
01/02/2009 07:29 PM
Subject: Citizen science in this week's edition of Nature (and a mention 
of USA-NPN's Project BudBurst)

Citizen science in this week's edition of Nature

Editorial

Nature 457, 8 (1 January 2009) | doi:10.1038/457008a; Published online 31
December 2008

A public service

The Christmas bird count is a model to be emulated in distributed,
volunteer science.

The 5th of January marks the completion of the 109th Christmas bird count, 
a yearly rite in which groups of North American bird-lovers pick a day
around the winter solstice, fan out in teams to their designated areas,
and count every bird that they see.

Held every year since 1900, when the National Audubon Society proposed it
as an alternative to the then-popular Yuletide activity of competitively
shooting birds, the count is the longest-running volunteer science project

in the world. Its data have informed reams of peer-reviewed work, such as
an ongoing effort by Audubon researchers to predict how birds will adjust
their ranges in response to climate change.

The count has served as a model for any number of volunteer science
efforts. Such projects now flourish â?? not least because the Internet
makes it so easy for scientists to find, recruit and coordinate the
volunteers. Out in the field, examples range from Project BudBurst, in
which participants report on the timing of climate-influenced botanical
events such as flowering and leafing, to the Great World Wide Star Count,
in which astronomy buffs check the number of stars visible in certain
bright constellations as a way of monitoring light pollution.

Indoors, meanwhile, network-based projects include Folding at home, in which
millions of users allow their idle home computers to be used to simulate
protein folding, and Galaxy Zoo, in which participants use their prowess
at pattern recognition to classify the millions of galaxies captured in
telescopic images â?? something that still flummoxes computers.

The lesson of this list is that the world is full of enthusiastic people 
-- and that the opportunities for researchers to tap into this enthusiasm
are limited only by their own imaginations. Volunteer science is a 
win--win situation for all concerned. Scientists get to take on projects

that would not be feasible for even the largest research group, while
helping to increase the public's understanding of, and support for,
science. And the volunteers get to have fun, while experiencing the
satisfaction of defending the environment, fighting disease or expanding
human knowledge.

So researchers should think creatively about whether the data they need,
or the crunching or sorting they must do, can be outsourced to members of
the public. And while they are at it, perhaps they should also consider
joining one or more citizen science projects themselves. Participation in
such efforts can reconnect scientists consumed with grant-writing and
project management with the 'doing' of science. In the Christmas bird
count, the most skilled bird spotters and identifiers are inevitably the
non-scientists; professional ornithologists spend too much time doing
paperwork. And, of course, volunteering for science feels good, especially 
when you see a black oystercatcher, say, or two merging galaxies --
something fun, beautiful and rare.

**************************************************

-- 
Prof. Mark D. Schwartz
Chair, USA National Phenology Network Board of Directors
Secretary, International Society of Biometeorology
Email:  mds at uwm.edu
Phone:  (414) 229-3740 or 4866
Fax:  (414) 229-3981
HPage:  http://www.uwm.edu/~mds
Department of Geography, Bolton 410
P.O. Box 413
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI  53201-0413