EurekAlert: Mapping the ocean’s unseen heroes, one microbe at a time. “Invisible to the naked eye, the health and movement of marine microbes that drift as part of the plankton is difficult to picture even for scientists – let alone everyday citizens. This challenge, to visualise the range of conditions that drifting marine microbes encounter, brought a group of expert scientists and visual designers together on a path to create the online citizen science project Adrift. Adrift is a portal that connects the public with the lives of microscopic marine microbes as they are propelled around the globe by ocean currents, with temperature and nutrient availability changing along the way.”
citizen science
Lifehacker: Track Rare Cicadas With The Cicada Safari App
Lifehacker: Track Rare Cicadas With The Cicada Safari App. “A better way to track and document the cicadas in your area is to download the Cicada Safari app (free on Android and iOS) from Mount St. Joseph University. Right now, I can check a map for sightings, and as soon as my local cicadas begin to emerge, I can snap pictures of them for cicada scientists to study.”
Nature: Mystery of deadly Indonesian tsunami cracked using social-media videos
Nature: Mystery of deadly Indonesian tsunami cracked using social-media videos. “A super-fast tsunami that ravaged an Indonesian island last year, killing thousands, was almost certainly triggered by underwater landslides, according to a detailed reconstruction of the disaster using surveillance-camera and video footage harvested from amateur posts on YouTube and other social media.”
EurekAlert: US cities host more regionally unique species than previously thought
EurekAlert: US cities host more regionally unique species than previously thought. “To better understand whether rapidly growing cities are hosting the same species, a concept known as urban homogenization, a team from the California Academy of Sciences analyzed an immense volume of data gathered by citizen scientists during the four-day global City Nature Challenge. The 14 U.S. cities included in the study amassed more than 65,000 wildlife observations identified to species level through the mobile app iNaturalist.”
Forbes: The Entrepreneur Who Is Using Video Games And Cryptocurrency To Protect Biodiversity
Forbes: The Entrepreneur Who Is Using Video Games And Cryptocurrency To Protect Biodiversity. “A free app, QuestaGame has captured the imaginations of children and adults alike. Players take photos of flora and fauna with the app on their phones. They earn points for sightings and the rarity of their location and season and gain special powers as they climb to higher levels.”
The Verge: Why NASA wants you to point your smartphone at trees
The Verge: Why NASA wants you to point your smartphone at trees. “NASA would like you to take a picture of a tree, please. The space agency’s ICESat-2 satellite estimates the height of trees from space, and NASA has created a new tool for citizen scientists that can help check those measurements from the ground. All it takes is a smartphone, the app, an optional tape measure, and a tree.”
Scale force: citizen scientists reel in data on salmon and sea trout (The Irish Times)
The Irish Times: Scale force: citizen scientists reel in data on salmon and sea trout. “The Minister of State with responsibility for inland fisheries, Seán Canney, is seeking assistance from anglers to become citizen scientists for the National Salmon Scale Project. The initiative aims to collect information through scales from salmon and sea trout which will contribute to the conservation of wild salmon stocks.”
