Citizen Science

Believe it or not, there are real live scientists all over the globe looking for data, for information about what us every day people are seeing. Everything from GPS tracking your cat’s movements through the neighborhood to logging the number of insects that visit a sunflower. There are literally thousands of citizen science projects out there! You can find tons of projects and search by topics at SciStarter.org, but below are some projects that study what we love best at Nicholas Conservatory… Plants and nature!

1.      iNaturalist is one of the easiest ways to get started with citizen science and is likely one of the most popular. With this easy to use app, you snap a photo with your phone or tablet and upload your observation. If you know what it is, you can identify it, if you don’t, the app is pretty good at recognizing a lot of plants and animals. If the app isn’t sure, other iNaturalist users can ID it for you. Join the City Nature Challenge for the Rock River Valley, hosted by Severson Dells Nature Center each spring! The City Nature Challenge is a friendly competition between cities to document as many local plant, animal, and insect observations as we can! Best of all, you can participate from your backyard, your neighborhood, your school, your local park… wherever!

2.      Budburst is a great citizen science project to in the spring as plants are just starting to wake up! Budburst is a project of Chicago Botanic Garden that studies phenology of plants. Phenology is the study of the timing of natural events through the seasons like when animals hibernate and when plants flower. Simply choose the plant you want to observe and note when it leafs out, when it flowers and fruits, and when the leaves drop. One great thing about this project is that you can participate with paper and pencil so you’re not fiddling with technology while you’re out in your backyard nature – this also makes it a good school project!

3.      BeeSpotter is citizen science project from the University of Illinois. The U of I is looking for people to take photos of bumble bees and honey bees and document the location so they can better understand bee demographics in the Midwest.

4.      Monarch Watch is my favorite citizen science initiative. It was started in 1992 at the University of Kansas to better understand not only monarch butterfly habitats, but to study the amazing fall migration of these spectacular insects. If you get monarch butterflies or caterpillars in your yard this is a great project for you! You can order tags (tiny numbered stickers) from Monarch Watch, tag your fall Monarchs, logging your tag numbers and location. In the spring as the monarchs are leaving Mexico and heading back to the United States, scientists at the overwintering site start collecting the dead butterflies and collecting tag data. Not only do scientists use this data to study the migration of the butterflies, but it’s also super satisfying to see where your butterflies were recovered!

5.      Celebrate Urban Birds, like Budburst, is nice in that there’s a paper and pencil component so we’re not glued to our devices while watching the birds. This project focuses on 16 common backyard birds and comes with lots of great identification information, so it’s easy for the beginning birder!