From Amateur Biologists, Data for All - Sci-Ed

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-10-21

Summary:

"How much of an impact can average citizens have on wildlife biology research and conservation? As it turns out, they’re the workhorses behind some of environmental science’s most important datasets, old and new. The value of citizen scientists in wildlife monitoring revealed through two (very different) projects. One December morning every year my father gets up early, pulls on heavy snow boots and layers of warm clothes, grabs his binoculars and a bird book, and walks out into the woods around our home. He tromps through the snow, stopping every few minutes to listen and to search the fields and treetops for movement. If he catches a glimpse of something, a feathered body flitting through branches, his binoculars automatically meet his eyes. Later, he drives through rolling corn-stubbled fields in his truck, parking to scan for hawks, snow buntings, horned larks, and just maybe a snowy owl. When darkness falls the day isn’t over, though; he walks out again into the snowy silence and listens carefully for barred owls hooting on the mountainside by our house ..."

Link:

http://blogs.plos.org/scied/2015/02/16/amateur-biologists-data-for-all/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.biology oa.biodiversity oa.environment oa.conservation oa.crowd oa.lay oa.data

Date tagged:

10/21/2015, 18:39

Date published:

10/21/2015, 14:39