Citizen Science

Heat. Hi everybody. Um, thanks for coming to the science circle today. I'm Hope Butterbush Esparanza freeze in Second Life. In case anybody wondered, when I joined Second Life, we could not choose our last names. So, I choose one that was familiar to me. Freeze. Um, my career has taken me from school library media specialist to district curriculum supervisor to college and university instructor and administrator. I am not a scientist, but I am a science enthusiast and a designer of environmental education programs. My job at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science led me to environmental science education. Today, um, I'm going to talk about citizen science, uh, programs that I've created in Second Life and in real life for my job and those I've done in my retirement. I'm going to explain what citizen science is, the concepts and the programs, and tell you how you can get involved in citizen science projects. Then we're going to try out some programs you can use here in Second Life and at home where you're located. The term citizen science was added to the Oxford English dictionary only in 2014 and they describe it as scientific work undertaken by members of the general public often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions. Although I say that that's not always the case because I've created some on my own. Early largecale crowdsourced projects included William Wewell's, if that's how you say his name, massive 1835 global title study. He relied on thousands of international sailors and local observers and it was known as the great tide experience experiment, sorry. Um, he wanted to unify tidal data and and turn it into tide tables. The first true example of modern citizen science was launched by Wells Cook and he was uh considered the father of cooperative study of bird migration in America. He was an American ornithologist. He reached out to amateur birding enthusiasts to collect information on bird migration and this was 1881 and 82. This program evolved into the US Geological Surveys North American bird phenology program and that was ran from 1881 to 1970. Before science became a paid profession and in the 19th century discoveries were largely made by gentlemen amateurs like Charles Darwin. Charles never held a formal science position nor did he have a science degree. He used his wealth to fund his travels and experiments. While the concept of everyday people participating as in research as old as science itself, the formal term citizen science originated independently in the mid 1900s. First by Alan Irw from the United Kingdom. He thought he created the term citizen science. He was at the University of Manchester. He authored several books and papers. He was chair of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters and dean at universities. His goal was to build a bridge between the public doing some research and scientific institutions. Also in the 90s, Rick Bonnie in the United States created thought he created the term citizen science. He said he was unaware of Irwin's work. Um Rick was at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, but he helps establish the term as a formal scientific discipline. There have been many many formal citizen science projects and National Autobon Society launched theirs in uh 1900 with the Christmas bird count. Um it was the first formal citizen wildlife census. It's now the annual great backyard bird count sponsored by Cornell and the next one is next year in February and you can participate in that one. In the 1980s um MIT launched um a a citizen science project. They recruited volunteers to monitor acid rain levels uh where citizens tested the water for pH and alkalinity levels and then reported back to MIT. The rise of the internet and smartphones did a modern expansion of citizen science transformed it into a global crowdsourced phenomenon, allowing the public to upload photos of plants and log insect counts or count birds and a variety of other types of research. They lo uh loaded them up to or sorry uploaded them to specialized databases that you can find on the internet. My citizens pro uh science projects um the first three at the university, the last three in my retirement and I'm going to go over those quickly. The first one I created was the Tampa Bay Beach Buddies Shoreline Cleanup Program. This was funded by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, Penllis County Schools, Penllis County Millennium Celebration, and distributed to public schools in three Florida counties. We had over 2,000 participants each year for about 5 years. They collected the trash along the shoreline. They recorded the pounds and the types of trash and turned that information into the keep beautiful organizations in the three counties in Florida. In 2000 and 2001, we had a camp out teachin for this program and uh we got together on a weekend at one of the local national parks and uh we developed environmental science education programs, lots of fun activities for the students to um to do. They came with their parents, their grandparents, uh their teachers and general public. We won an environmental program award from Keep Hillsboro. Beautiful for this one. My next one was Wild and Wonderful Tampa Bay Habitat is where it's at. This was an integrated curriculum program for middle school and high school students. It was distributed to 5,000 classroom teachers in three counties in Florida, funded again by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, and it introduced citizen science activities to students and teachers and their parents and grandparents. Uh, and we did uh bird and wildlife sightings and invasive invasive plant species. This was also a giant poster that teachers could post in their classroom. And on the back of the poster, it had um lesson plans. In my retirement, I've worked on the Heritage Pines Community Bluebird Trail here in Florida. This was established by our first resident here. His name was Herb Elliot in 1999. And he installed Ubird boxes along the edge of our golf course. There were about 20 of them at the time. We have our our numbers vary depending on on the number of birds that we have. Um the picture that you see is my bluebird monitoring partner Bob Johnson who is a amateur photographer. And normally when you check the bird boxes you have to open the the front where the portal is and the birds don't like that at all. So, uh, being a great photographer, Bob came up with this invention called an endoscopic boroscope, uh, that was attached to a cell phone, and he would put the camera through the portal of the bird box and snap a picture, and he could get in and out of that area in about 3 seconds. Uh, that way he we didn't disturb the birds very much. We collect this information in February, March through July, August each year. Uh we had some funding from the Florida Bluebird Society and of course Heritage Pines chipped in to help pay for the supplies. What you see on the pole, that metal piece on the pole is is to keep out snakes and squirrels and critters out of the bird boxes because critters love bird eggs and little flat fledglings. Um we uh collect this data. We have about five uh volunteers right now uh and report that information to the Florida Bluebird Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and we participate in the Great American Bird Count. My next project is interpretive signage. What you see in the lower picture is an aerial view of our wetland preserve. And on the lower left corner, you can barely see it, but there's an observation deck that goes out over the um wetland preserve. And so I developed these interpretive signs with the they're manufactured by a professional sign company called Pulse Designs. And they have interpretive signage all around the country in historic areas, national parks, and places like mine. So, I designed the the the signs to so so our residents can understand what they're looking at and what kind of birds and animals are out there on the wetland. We have uh this one is the big one is uh on the lower left is uh all about the wetland ecosystem. Then we've got birds of prey and herrings and egrets. We also have another one that discusses the Florida bluebirds and the bluebird trail. My latest sign is in our little uh park called Gazebo Park and it it gives the history of the park and all the plants that are that are there. This is a little teaching park where um uh do I have rights to the graphics? Yes, Beth. Yes. Um, this is a little teaching park and we have volunteers who are who do workshops and tell our residents about the the plants and uh residents can take cutings and can take bulbs from the different flowering plants and uh they this is a park where you can come and sit down in the gazebo or other benches and just listen to nature. It's just a beautiful little park. I also help recruit volunteers. We have about five volunteers now who work in the park along with our commons ground um staff that for Heritage Pines. Um I've had a couple projects in Second Life, actually three, uh four maybe. Um, the first one was with Noah on Second Earth called Immersion Island. Uh, this was about 2008 to 12 kind of in there. I lost track of time. It was called uh Dive Bonaire National Marine Park. It was it the real place is in the Netherlands, Lesser Antilles. And I used the Noah's Bonaire 2008 exploring a coral reef project. Dolly Wavewriter was an um a visitor there quite often and he wrote this. When I first came to Second Life, I traveled around to see various real life places which were important to me. More than the rest, Esparanza's Bonire held true to me as far as corresponding to my real world experience. Bonire was a uniquely eco-friendly real life space and I really appreciated Dolly writing that. And basically it was a underwater you could explore underwater to check out the coral reef that was made there. And um it was just I thought a lot of fun. You could uh go on adventures down there. And uh started out as an educational program but that didn't go off too well. It was really hard to get educators to do things back then. And so I turned it into a citizen science project. The next one was uh Caribbean University at Barlo Vento about 2012 2013 maybe 14. This was going to be wind energy education in the Caribbean. And I had a sponsor of the US Department of State, Organization of American States with partners, the University of South Florida College of Marine Science where I worked at the time, James Madison University in with their wind energy program and University of West Indies and Anton DMP in the in the uh West Indies. this program didn't quite get off the ground as an educational project. Um uh so I turned that one into a citizen science project as well. Uh what I had there was a um wind farm, offshore wind farm with a control booth that you could come in and um and uh learn how to um learn all about wind energy. Sorry, I get distracted by these IMs. Um, so, uh, because that one again didn't turn out too well for the education side. It was a great, um, citizen science project. The last one I was involved with in Second Life is Citizen Science Bay by Utahar and it's in Pensacola, Florida, and it was created by my colleague David Freeze, who you heard speak a couple of weeks ago. Is David here? I didn't see if he came in or not. No, I guess he didn't make it. I was going to ask him to do a little update. Anyway, this was an intelligent waterways project that he called. It was about water testing along the bayou. And he uh uh recruited citizens in Pensacola to have uh instruments installed on their deck along the or their dock along the bayou and uh the residents would monitor the water quality and report back to to him. We also created a a digital twin project here in Second Life, which was um basically uh a short-lived program because it was just really a demonstration project for people that David knew outside of Second Life. But we did have an internationally renowned speaker, Franco Lodado, who was um known for his uh biomimicry in industrial designs. He showed us how nature is used in indust industrial designs. Um, oh, thanks D. Appreciate that. Um, so we uh we had that one speaker uh and we had 12 people attend in Second Life and 12 people outside of Second Life watching on the live stream. And basically David wanted to demonstrate what a digital twin project looked like because his audience was interested in that. But this project is ongoing. David is still working on this project and it's also with the city of Pensacola. Now you're probably wondering how you can become a citizen science scientist, right? Of course you want to do that. Well, you can design your own project. First, you need to define a scientific research question. But before you go about designing your own project, do a search to see if there are any existing projects already on that topic. Don't reinvent the wheel because there's so many wonderful projects out there that you can join. But if you do want to create your own, keep it simple. do a stepby-step instructions to collect the data that you want to collect. Um, use established platforms to host your project. There's tons of of u programs on the internet that you can uh uh tap into. And you want to plan how you share your results. You want to identify your volunteers. You want to train your volunteers. You want a data management plan. Check the quality of the data. Where are you going to store that data and analyze everything? Then give your volunteers feedback. Tell them the importance of your project and tell them how they're doing when they work with you. Now, here's a project that you can get involved with right now. This is basically designed for middle school and high school students, but I think it can be adapted for 55 plus active retirees. It's sponsored by this Discovery Engineering Company and it connects people to engineering opportunities across the United States. Um, it benefits native plants, animals, and of course people. It gets people out into the environment. It could restore habitats like this one or any in your neck of the woods. There's a URL they'll ur there for you to um copy and paste into your browser. If you're into birds, um Cornell Lab of Ornithology has this EIRD app that you can download to your cell phone or tablet, smartphone. Um it's the world's largest biodiversity and birding database and it tracks what they call your personal life list. Basically, it it creates a list of the birds that you hear outside your window or door or wherever you're listening. And you can upload your bird sightings to help with their global conservation efforts. And you can download that app at this uh website. Cornell also has the Merlin Bird ID app. This is the one I use. I like this one uh best. Um it's um a database of birds and bird identifications. And basically after you download the app on both of these um there is a microphone that you can turn on or you can snap a photograph and it'll identify the bird for you. The difference between these two apps is that the EIRD app is a global tracking tool that lets you log your bird sightings to help scientists monitor wildlife. The Merlin bird ID is a smart identification guide designed to help you figure out what bird you're looking at or hearing. So, I use this practically every day. I just love, you know, holding it up to the window or going outside and and uh turning on the microphone and identify the birds that I'm hearing. Um, now I'm starting to be able to recognize the bird songs. Um, I naturalist is a great app uh that identifies plants and animals. I've used this to identify plants, particularly in our little gazebo park. We also have another park called Paleo Park. That's a whole another story. It's an ancient sinkhole. But anyway, this one will identify plants and animals and fungi and a whole lot more. And you can add to a living atlas of life on Earth. This was originally created in 2008 by three students at UC Berkeley School of Information. It was their master's final project. Brilliant. Now it's a nonprofit organization. It's still going strong. And I've used this one as well. I love this one to to identify plants. If you want to get involved in something that's already gone going, log into Zuniverse. It's the world's largest platform for peoplepowered research. It connects professional researchers with millions of volunteers worldwide and you can find pls in your own location or if you're going on vacation, you can find one wherever you're going. It facilitates real results from impractical or otherwise impossible research. It has led to new discoveries, policies, impacts, and research publications. uh and you can find it at this uh website. Um if you want to be a storm spotter or climate observer, you Noah has this weather ready nation program that you can get um involved with uh in your area and uh you can log into that and see what's going on in other parts of the world. Geocaching is a really fun activity. I've done it. I've created some uh it's just so much fun. You can adapt this to a citizen science program, which I have done here in my community. This is a global outdoor treasure hunting game. It uses GPS coordinates to locate hidden containers. And the containers always have a log book where you write your name and where you're from and give your observations of the location. And then they want you to take an a a a token out of the container and put one in. So, if you're in a location that's talking about fossils or really anything, they'll have something in that container that's um pertains to the topic and they want you to take a token with you, but they want you to put one in. So, you could put in a bird feather or a rock or something that you bring with you. Um it could be something that uh that is uh native to your area. So it could be almost anything. So citizens travel to remote locations all around the world to do this geocaching and you can look at what's around your location. The US Geological Survey uses it to engage public in data collection and you can download this program or look at this program at that URL. So now let's explore. we're going to use the rest of the time to explore some of the the programs and apps. Um, I've got on my display up here, I've got three four things on the table. One of them is a microscope. And if somebody has never looked under a microscope, you can come up here, click on the slide, and look to see what's under the microscope. The one right next to it with the screen is a world weather map and you can click on that map and find what the weather is any place in the world in your location or any place else. The next one uh takes you out to the I naturalist website and the last one uh takes you to the Merlin ID bird ID website. on the screen there is a video that talks about citizen science and um you can watch that by clicking on on the screen. Um what what I also would like you to do is to download the Merlin Bird ID app to your cell phone or tablet. You can do that now and then go to your window or your door and start recording the bird sounds that you hear. Or if you can't do that, you can open a bird a web browser and search YouTube for birds in your area or anywhere else and turn on your microphone and it'll start identifying the birds for you. And then, excuse me, come back and type in chat what you've observed and what you think of the app, your name and location, and drop it on a note card, too. You can do that and drop it in the bird box. And then I have a little gift for you when you're finished with that.