November 17, 2022

Discover Magazine: Largest-Ever Fungi Bioblitz Catalogs the Diversity of North American Mushrooms and More

Discover Magazine: Largest-Ever Fungi Bioblitz Catalogs the Diversity of North American Mushrooms and More. “This fall, between September 15 and October 15, more than 30,000 volunteers combed through forests, fields and even their own backyards in search of the humble mushroom…. Altogether, the citizen scientists who took part collected nearly 150,000 fungi sightings, and identified almost 4,400 different species. Their findings were posted on a digital map, as well as to an online database, and the data they gathered will be used by mycologists who are studying the diversity of fungi across the continent.”

New Resources 0
November 5, 2022

Disappearing coastlines: A smartphone and selfie stick can let us know by how much (University of Copenhagen)

University of Copenhagen: Disappearing coastlines: A smartphone and selfie stick can let us know by how much. “New mobile phone technology makes it possible to better monitor Danish coastlines, which recede up to four meters a year in some places. The method, which has been tested by the University of Copenhagen, also lets citizen scientists help researchers and government agencies monitor coastal erosion and may provide us with a better understanding of erosion in the future.”

Research & Opinion 0
October 29, 2022

MENAFN: Amateur Archaeologists Use Google Earth To Identify A Roman-Era Villa In The U.K.—Complete With Central Heating

MENAFN: Amateur Archaeologists Use Google Earth To Identify A Roman-Era Villa In The U.K.—Complete With Central Heating. “Members of the community-based Kent Archaeological Society were using the publicly available software, which is based on satellite imagery, to conduct a remote survey of their history-rich county, as part of the ongoing Trosley Heritage Project. As they were looking through the aerial views, linear crop markings on farmland near Trosley quickly caught the group’s attention.”

Research & Opinion 0
October 29, 2022

Spritacular: NASA’s New Citizen Science Project to Capture Elusive Upper Atmospheric Electrical Phenomena on Camera (NASA Science)

NASA Science: Spritacular: NASA’s New Citizen Science Project to Capture Elusive Upper Atmospheric Electrical Phenomena on Camera. “NASA’s newest citizen science project, Spritacular (pronounced sprite-tacular), leverages the power of crowdsourcing to advance the study of sprites and other Transient Luminous Events, or TLEs. TLEs include a range of electrical phenomena that occur above thunderstorms and produce brief flashes of light. The new citizen science project aims to connect professional scientists with members of the public who would like their camerawork to contribute to scientific studies.”

New Resources 0
September 12, 2022

National Science Foundation: Researchers develop dashboard to track invasive and vector mosquitoes

National Science Foundation: Researchers develop dashboard to track invasive and vector mosquitoes. “Researchers at the University of South Florida, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, created the Global Mosquito Observations Dashboard to surveil mosquito-borne diseases with automated mosquito identification. The dashboard makes use of data from other apps that use citizen scientists to capture photos of mosquitoes. The approach offers international data on a scale otherwise prohibitive due to expense and logistics.”

New Resources 0
August 26, 2022

PBS: Not all scientists wear lab coats. Volunteers are fueling research nationwide

PBS: Not all scientists wear lab coats. Volunteers are fueling research nationwide. “There’s a term for people who contribute to this knowledge purely out of love of the game: citizen scientists. And opportunities to get involved with federally run or sponsored initiatives — from mapping mosquito habitats with smartphones to tallying up plastic pellets spotted on the beach — have only expanded over time.”

Research & Opinion 0
July 9, 2022

EurekAlert: Citizen scientist leads discovery of 34 ultracool dwarf binaries using archive at NSF’s NOIRLab

EurekAlert: Citizen scientist leads discovery of 34 ultracool dwarf binaries using archive at NSF’s NOIRLab. “A citizen scientist has searched NSF’s NOIRLab’s catalog of 4 billion celestial objects, known as NOIRLab Source Catalog DR2, to reveal brown dwarfs with companions. His intensive investigation led to the discovery of 34 ultracool dwarf binary systems, nearly doubling previously known samples.”

Research & Opinion 0
July 7, 2022

National Science Foundation: Citizen science project analyzes data to model treetop snowpack and predict melt

National Science Foundation: Citizen science project analyzes data to model treetop snowpack and predict melt. “Thousands of volunteers categorized 13,600 images from remote U.S. locations into images that showed snow on tree branches, images that didn’t, and images that were inconclusive. In the future, the dataset could be used to train machine learning in analyzing the images.”

Research & Opinion 0
June 30, 2022

Inside Climate News: Rediscovered Reports From 19th-Century Environmental Volunteers Advance the Research of Today’s Citizen Scientists in New York

Inside Climate News: Rediscovered Reports From 19th-Century Environmental Volunteers Advance the Research of Today’s Citizen Scientists in New York. “After unearthing 200-year-old seasonal observations from across New York, a team of researchers found a window into the past of the state’s natural landscapes, and a key to understanding its future.”

Research & Opinion 0
June 23, 2022

North Carolina State University: Volunteers Who Help Gather Data for Science Are Committed, But Not Diverse

North Carolina State University: Volunteers Who Help Gather Data for Science Are Committed, But Not Diverse. “In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found that while many volunteers who sign up to help crowdsource scientific findings are extremely motivated and committed, these projects aren’t attracting a diverse pool of volunteers. The findings could help researchers design and structure future projects, as well as point to priorities for volunteer recruitment.”

Research & Opinion 0
June 22, 2022

NewsWise: You Can Help Scientists Study the Atmosphere on Jupiter

NewsWise: You Can Help Scientists Study the Atmosphere on Jupiter. “A new citizen science project, led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities with support from NASA, allows volunteers to play an important role in helping scientists learn more about the atmosphere on Jupiter. Citizen scientists can help astrophysicists categorize tens of thousands of stunning images taken from the Juno spacecraft with just a web browser.”

New Resources 0
May 23, 2022

Ars Technica: Citizen scientists help discover more than 1,000 new asteroids

Ars Technica: Citizen scientists help discover more than 1,000 new asteroids. “On International Asteroid Day in 2019, a group of research institutions launched a program that could make a deep impact on our knowledge of the diminutive bodies. Using citizen science to train a machine-learning algorithm, the Hubble Asteroid Hunter project identified more than 1,000 new asteroids; the discoveries could help scientists better understand the ring of heavenly bodies that primarily float between Mars and Jupiter.”

Research & Opinion 0
May 19, 2022

Poll the Audience: Using Data From Citizen Science to Keep Wild Birds in Flight (Utah State University)

Utah State University: Poll the Audience: Using Data From Citizen Science to Keep Wild Birds in Flight. “Using the eyes and ears of public volunteers can stretch the reach of science, according to a new analysis from Erica Stuber from the Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center. Stuber and a team of researchers examined the accuracy of information produced by citizen science apps for monitoring bird populations. They compared publicly-produced data with officially tracked numbers from monitoring programs and found that, with some refinement, data from citizen scientists could offer a lot of utility for researchers.”

Research & Opinion 0
May 6, 2022

European Space Agency: ‘Spot the difference’ to help reveal Rosetta image secrets

European Space Agency: ‘Spot the difference’ to help reveal Rosetta image secrets. “Today, ESA and the Zooniverse launch Rosetta Zoo, a citizen science project that invites volunteers to engage in a cosmic game of ‘spot the difference’. By browsing through pictures collected by ESA’s Rosetta mission, you can help scientists figure out how a comet’s surface evolves as it swings around the Sun.”

New Resources 0
April 28, 2022

Popular Science: Open data is a blessing for science—but it comes with its own curses

Popular Science: Open data is a blessing for science—but it comes with its own curses. “iNaturalist’s Seek is a great example of an organization doing something interesting and otherwise impossible without a large, open dataset. These kinds of datasets are both a hallmark and a driving force of scientific research in the information age, a period defined by the widespread use of powerful computers. They have become a new lens through which scientists view the world around us, and have enabled the creation of tools that also make science accessible to the public.”

Research & Opinion 0

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