Citizen Science

Citizen science is a way that you and all your friends can help scientists by documenting what you see in your garden or out in nature. Scientists reach out to the public to help them with data collection in order to do broader research. Helping with citizen science projects can be educational and it also is inspiring to know we are part of something bigger.

We have all heard that biodiversity on this planet is declining. Especially the smaller species are rapidly disappearing and we don’t even know exactly how much we are losing. Some beetles go extinct before they are even discovered because we just don’t have enough scientist out there documenting beetles. Recording the species that occur in certain areas can help scientist see where populations are, or where they are declining.

A recent citizen science bee study in St Louis discovered several species of bee that had not been recorded in the area before. Having so many people recording the bees they saw in their area made it possible for more observations to be included in the research. Bee diversity in St Louis was even higher than the scientists expected.

A current citizen science project involves ticks. People can save the ticks they find to send in to researchers for study. The researchers are looking at species and abundance of ticks across the country as well as the diseases they carry. Tick born diseases are spreading rapidly and effecting more people each year. It will be nice to have this new data about what diseases are out there and where the ticks are.

The inaturalists app is a tool that many researchers use when gathering citizen scientists’ data. Our observations on inaturalists can help researches locate populations of rare plants or notice when unique birds visit an area. They can also use the data to find records of when flowers are blooming, eggs are hatching, or butterflies migrating. Invasive species spreading to new areas is also recorded in inaturalists. Invasive species are easiest to control if you start treatment early so having this up-to-date data is great for wild life managers. Sometimes the observer doesn’t even know what species they are looking at but scientists can see the photos and identify the species for them.

Get in contact with local universities to see how you can join citizen science projects to document insects, birds, and flowers. There are many projects going on, some are easy to join and some will require special training. Often, helping with these projects is as easy as taking some photos. The more of us helping out, the better we will understand our world and how to protect it.