A bit of non-job-related, non-citizen science productivity that I finished this week: This is my entry for the Eco-Comedy Video Competition, sponsored by the Sierra Club and American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking.
This was a bit of an unusual project for me… it coincided with a big life change [see: new job] so my work on it was a bit fragmented. On the happier side, it’s the first time I’ve done any kind of mouth-animation, so it’s nice to be able to learn new techniques.
Rough green snake; photo by cotinis via http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcoin/99047127/; used under Creative Commons license
Where do different animals live? That doesn’t seem like a terribly complicated question. After all, any field guide to anything will have range maps for whatever the guide is about.
In researching my book, I learned that those range maps are… well… only OK. In reality, they serve as general guidelines than absolute truth.
Citizen science is pretty well-suited to help improve them. Professional scientists, after all, can’t be everywhere to check if a given species has shown up in a given place. Amateurs can help to fill in the gaps.
One of the most celebrated examples of this was the nine-spotted ladybug. It’s the state insect of New York, but it hadn’t been seen in the state for almost 30 years and was believed to be extinct in the state. Until, of course, it was found again by a participant in the Lost Ladybug Project in 2011. (This was the second notable discovery of a nine-spotted ladybug through the project; a preteen brother and sister found one in Virginia in 2006, which was the first one found in the eastern US in 14 years.)
Many projects aim simply to get a grasp of what might live where. The Minnesota Odonata Survey Project, for example, is trying to rectify the fact that there are counties without any records of dragonflies or damselflies, even though those counties certainly have odonates in them. As project leader Kurt Mead told me, the state is sort of a crossroads for dragonflies and damselflies, and species from all parts of the continent have ranges that overlap there.
Camera phones are a great boon to this kind of work; they let amateurs document their finds, even if they don’t know for certain what they are, so that experts can make identifications and investigate further if needed.
I’m slowly populating the links section in the sidebar with citizen science projects. This week’s additions are this type of project that aim (at least in part) to help improve range maps of various species, including:
Butterflies and Moths of North America
Adam Stevens argues for more science in citizen science. Worth a look, although as I’ve written, I see value in the non-research elements of citizen science as well.
Curiosity, for example, is awesome, and citizen science can help pique it. Also, helping kids develop the skills they will need to ultimately enter a scientific career.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology highlights some of its citizen science projects, with particular focus on their use in education.
Citizen science results: The effect of climate change on butterfly flight; finding “lost” plant species.
New (to me) citizen science projects: Uncover Your Creeks (water quality monitoring in Vancouver, British Columbia); Secchi App (a worldwide phytoplankton study).
Miscellaneous birding tidbits.
Steven Brust sends an open letter to his editor. It’s funny.
Also funny: Weird Al Yankovic’s set-up for teaching his daughter the piano. If I ever teach music, I’m going to replicate this.
So, Thursday I started my new job. And Thursday night, I’m embarrassed to admit, I had a bit of a panic attack.
It really wasn’t serious, I don’t think. I was just in a situation where all kinds of thoughts were bubbling up and I didn’t have much way to diffuse them. I still don’t (while I started Thursday, the past couple days have been training so I’m not really doing anything until Monday, and most of my normal coping mechanisms aren’t really available to me today.) So to try to exorcise them, I’m going to write them out. Hopefully they’ll look as silly on screen as I think they are.
My irrational worries
It’s been about 9 months since I’ve had a standard work-for-someone-else job. So is the day-to-day grind something I’m going to be okay going back to?
Also, this job isn’t a traditional job-job; I’ll be working remotely without a lot of direct human contact. Is that going to work out?
Am I going to be okay spending as much time in my apartment looking at my computer as I’m going to be spending?
This one’s a bit nebulous. My last job… well, it put a lot of effort into breaking me. I spent most of my time arguing over things that were really really obvious and losing, because the arguments were actually about enforcing status and I was on the bottom. That put me into a situation of comfortable victimhood; there was an equilibrium, and even though it was terrible I was getting through. What if I try to recreate that terrible equilibrium because it’s what I know? (I warned you these were irrational.)
The terms of this job — salary, benefits, etc. — look good. But what if I’m wrong or missing something and in fact they’re terrible?
Or, what if I’m selling out and I get comfortable in this position and lose the motivation to create anything else that I love creating?
Hmm.
It still looks really stupid. I know that if this job doesn’t work out, the right reaction is to get another one, and the only way to create is to, you know, create. Until I get the chance to actually experience how situation is working out, though, I guess the fear will have to tumble around for a little while longer.
Citizen science is more than just science.
That’s not to say that citizen science isn’t science, because it is, or at least can be. But citizen science as a general field has three broad goals:
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly at Merwin Nature Preserve in McLean County, Illinois. Photo by tlindenbaum. Used under Creative Commons license.
Research: This is where the science comes in. Research would encompass any sort of data collecting and analysis that helps humanity as a whole to understand more about the world. The Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network is an example that I’d consider to focus on this area; it has strict data collection protocols and a goal of collecting and analyzing information about the butterfly populations at specific locations.
Advocacy: Many citizen science projects have conservation or contribution to policy decision-making as an explicit part of their goals. Even those that don’t, however, could be seen as having some advocacy element. (Few people study something out of their incredible indifference to it.) GLOBE at Night is an example of this. As its website says: “The GLOBE at Night program is an international citizen-science campaign to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution by inviting citizen-scientists to measure their night sky brightness.”
Education: Learning is a natural consequence of citizen science: As someone participates in a project, they will naturally learn about its subject and about science in general. Journey North has a strong educational component; this project studying wildlife migration and seasonal changes* was originally targeted toward students, and while it’s now open to everyone, learning generally about the subjects covered is still a strong focus.
These categories aren’t really as strict as I’ve described them here; just about all projects have some mix of all three. The Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network, for example, is not be particularly accessible for casual participation, which somewhat limits its ability to serve as a broad public education tool. But those who do participate are responsible for learning about the wide variety of species studied by the project, and the information they collect is used in land management decisions.
“But is it science,” is a pretty common criticism of citizen science. I think the question misses the point. Citizen science includes research, but that isn’t its sole goal, and I don’t think it has to be to be worthwhile. Moreover, the wide range of available projects means that participants can find a project with the focus—both in subject and in the mix of research, advocacy, and learning—that fits for them.
* The proper term for the study of seasonal changes like ice-out dates, migrations, plant blooming, and the like is “phenology.” I’ll be using that term from here on out, because it’s a great word, although since most people don’t know it (I certainly didn’t before starting this book) I’ll keep defining it.
This afternoon, I gave my first interview (as a subject; I’ve been the interviewer plenty) about citizen science. It was with Natalie Paddon of the Western Citizen Science project.
Western Citizen Science is a student journalism project investigating citizen science based at Western University in London, Ontario. They’re in the early days of the project, but it should be interesting to watch it develop.
This new weekly feature is simply a wrapup of cool stuff I’ve seen this week. Enjoy!
At Scientific American, Katie Worth writes about her experiences living on Mars time.
Wordcount ranks words by how often they are used. Commonest is 15,319th commonest. (Via the QI Elves.)
I’m going to be an uncle soon, and I’m about to be employed, which means that I have legitimate reason to look at kid’s toys. Right? I love biking, and I hope the kid does too, so this balance bike intrigues me.
This has been making the rounds, but still pretty funny: Goats Yelling Like Humans
