Community Science for Biodiversity Monitoring

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Education outreach and data collection through
citizen science programs

• Robert D. Stevenson
• University of Massachusetts Boston
• http//www.cs.umb.edu/efg/
• robert.stevenson_at_umb.edu

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• Broad public understanding of Science as a Way
  of Knowing and of environmental issues is poor
• Citizen Science projects can improve this
  understanding because they engage people, foster
  inquiry, and improve domain specific knowledge
• Citizen Science projects need a greater
  coordination among groups NGOs, Educators,
  Scientists, Scientific Societies and Software
  Engineers
• Scientists can play a driving role, but we need
  new ways to organization themselves across
  traditional academic boundaries

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Nature and US
They divide the land into shares, so much for
nature and so much for people. This inevitable
leads to conflict. And since people are doing the
dividing you can be pretty sure which side will
win. We reveal our intentions by calling the
shares for nature, set-asides as if we were
merely holding them in reserve until we needed
them for later.
Diversitys best hope comes from what E.O. Wilson
calls biophilia. We all love nature. No one
wishes its demise. Rosenzweig Win-Win Ecology
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Slide of Tofel carton
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Parks orGardening Everywhere
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Education and Conservation
In his book Conservation Biology (1970) David
Ehrenfeld wrote (p. viii) "In order to want to
preserve something, one has to appreciate it
first,

• and the number of people who are intimately
  familiar with natural landscapes outside of the
  city and with wild species other than rats and
  pigeons grows proportionately smaller every day".
  

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In fact, imagine if we taught baseball the way
we teach science. Until they were twelve,
children would read about baseball technique and
occasionally hear inspirational stories of the
great baseball players. . Undergraduates might
be allowed, under strict supervision, to
reproduce historic games. But only in graduate
school would they, at last, actually get to play
a game.  
Gopnik, Alison. 1999. The New York Review of
Books,
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Where are we?

• World is getting full The impact of human
  activities are driving or starting to drive
  changes in the environment
• There is a gap in perception between the what the
  environmental scientists and an the public
  (fossil fuel industry) understands.

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What is the Public Understanding of Climate
Change

• Getting the information to the public?
• Can the public perceive climate change?
• What drives changes in society ?
• Policy is often reactive, instead wouldnt a
  precautionary approach be better

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Citizen Science

• Long History in US Christmas Bird Count
• Cornells Laboratory of Ornithology is the leader
• NE Wildflower Society

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Internet Opens up New Possibilities for Sharing
Information

• Geo referenced environmental data is needed on a
  much finer scale scientists can not get this
  information by themselves
• Specific projects - Monitoring Phenology,
  Invasive species and Biodiversity change

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Citizen Science Environmental Monitoring and
Discovery

• Involve Citizens Community Based
• Gets local people involved who understand the
  local context
• Breaks down barriers with the scientific
  community
• Not enough scientists to get the necessary data
  over broad temporal and spatial scales

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Dandelion Phenology

• Worked with an elementary school teacher to
  develop a curriculum
• Monitoring, community question and wonderment
  aspects
• Built a website to share information
  www.dandelionbiology.org
• Gave workshops to K-12 teachers
• Start to analyze the data

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Taraxacum officinale
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Childrens comments - Mowing

• My data has been half mowed by the lawn mowers!
• Right when I came out the door to the courtyard
  I found out that most of my rosette was mowed.
  All that was left of my rosette was 11 leaves, 5
  broken stems and one clover. A long time ago my
  rosette looked like a forest, now it looks like a
  desert.
• The mowers were nice and went around my
  rosette. My stem is 44 cm long. It is very cool.

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Childrens comments II

• My rosette has one stem that has the new seed
  head. It is pushing the old flower up like a
  tooth. There are some ants around my rosette. The
  diameter of a flower close to my rosette is six
  centimeters. One of Sam's flowers has a stem two
  centimeters wide.
• All my leaves have chicken pox. Well, it looks
  like that's what it is. They have red spots all
  over them.
• There is a ton of worker ants going in and out
  of a deep hole with a ramp like entrance.

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Young Scientists at Work!
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Childrens comments III

• I have 9 stems all total. Jillian has 22! My
  rosette is 43 cm in diameter. Mike's is 43 cm.
  His is only 1 cm longer than mine. The leaves on
  the mouse eared chickweed look like this. Drew
  plant. My rosette is 35 cm in diameter. I have 10
  dandelion flowers, and 8 opening flowers.
• There is a fuzzy leaf that looks like polar
  bear fur.
• The rosette next to mine is almost attached to
  mine. Chris and Mike found an ant colony. The
  ants are moving sticks and grass.

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"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the
fields, you know, and while quite at home with
the dandelion, make a sorry figure in a drawing
room. Emily Dickinson
Pine Trees in the Garden of Saint Paul Hospital
Vincent Van Gogh
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Now and Next

• Teachers like the project
• 1st graders like to adopt a dandelion
• Website was used but not sufficient yet
• Develop the metadata side
• Expand the curriculum
• Greatly improve feedback and engagement
  teachers
• Move to engage the scientific community

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Invasive Plants

• Focus on new invasive
  Pepperweed Lepidium
  latifolium
• Make a 2 page mini guide with worst offenders

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Coordinating Efforts

• Working in K-12 setting
• Know environmental educators
• Community building takes more effort and time
  that originally envisioned- Need partners
• Community can get data unattainable by
  scientists K-12 classes can do real Science
• Scientists are skeptical of Community Science
  Need Metadata, Certification Process?

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Role for Scientists and Scientific Societies

• Facilitate communication with the Science and
  Citizen Science partners over the Internet
  (distributed networks,W3C, XML,metadata
  standards, UDDI, semantic web)
• Study the data and improve the quality of data
  collection
• Certify Citizen Science projects What changes
  can we detect? Sophisticated statistical
  analyses Develop Quality Assurance Plan
• Promote projects with the wider world through
  scientific societies. If communications were very
  good we might be able to all agreed through the
  AIBS or AAAS that we would focus our efforts on a
  small number of network projects

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Changes coming in Environmental Science

• Move from single laboratory local field sites to
  multi investigator approaches as in Earth System
  Science (greatest challenge)
• Develop real time embedded sensor networks to
  monitor environmental changes (drive
  collaboration) Goal is Environmental
  Forecasting.
• Participate in NEON - National Environmental
  Observation Network
• Create Intergovernmental Panel on Environmental
  Change IPEC

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Directions Predicted

• Because of the magnitude of environmental change
  and the potential impacts on society, there will
  be greater efforts to come together across
  environmental sciences to meet these challenges
• How do we manage without knowledge
• Spend more effort communicating with the public
• A Citizen Science Approach can help with both of
  these needs

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Acknowledgements Gary Alpert Susan Abruzzi Hui
Dong Jennifer Forman Peggy Laufer Robert
Morris Fred SaintOurs Sigrid Smith
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• The first step to wisdom is getting things by
  their right names.
• -Chinese Proverb

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Community Partners

• Elementary Schools
• Massachusetts Aububon Society
• Field Naturalists
• UMass Boston - Biology Department
• Harvard - Musuem of Comparative Zoology
• State of Massachusetts - Executive Office of
  Environmental Affairs