A bee being watched by the Texas Bee Watchers project. (Photo by Kim Bacon)

The mysterious widespread deaths of honey bees over the last four years has been a great worry, both to backyard gardeners and large agricultural companies. That’s why it was such welcome news last week when Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana reported they had discovered a likely cause: a fatal combination of a virus and a fungus. (You can read their research report here in the PLoS ONE online journal.)

Unfortunately, it will probably be some time before this new clue translates into a practical solution to the problem. Meanwhile, the bees continue to die. According to the New York Times, “collapsed” colonies were reported in Florida and California earlier this year, and some experts worry that the general trend now could be as bad as during the first days of the decline.

As the Times’s Kirk Johnson wrote over the weekend, this “leaves a swarm of questions about where bees, and people, go from here.” Johnson’s article is a useful recap and status report on the crisis. If you’re concerned or curious about such issues as the level of damage, the role of climate change, and the danger posed to our food supply, I recommend you read his swarm of answers.

And if you’re wondering how you can help, consider joining one of the citizen science projects below, all of which enlist volunteers to study bees.

• The Great Sunflower Project
• Bee Hunt
• Black Hills Bee Project
• Texas Bee Watchers

Exciting news for all you lookers—that is, you folks who like to consume your information visually. We’ve just opened up a new wing of our site that features citizen science-flavored video: the Video Gallery.

Please click on over and check out, among other video adventures, underwater footage of the camera-stealing manta ray, a visit with the Open Dinosaur guys, live views from a wildlife-packed Australian backyard, and a lecture about “your brain on love.”

Loyal visitors to Science for Citizens know that in the past, clicking on the Video Gallery tab led to the “Oops” message, a placeholder page that explained we hadn’t yet built out that portion of our young site. That was a little sad, wasn’t it? No more. We are now ready for our close-ups—and our time-lapse sequences, and our interviews, and our animations, and our hidden-camera shots…

At the moment, the gallery includes a YouTube player featuring a short list of our team’s recent citizen science picks from that bottomless source of Web-based video. But enough about us, what about you? We’ll soon add another YouTube player to feature videos that you, the members of our online community, create and upload. When you submit your clips to YouTube, just be sure to add the tag “sci4cits.” We’ll spot it and put it on the Science for Citizens “From Our Community on YouTube” playlist.

The gallery page will always have an ever-changing buffet of video taken from our favorite online channels. In addition to our YouTube picks, the gallery is now showing clips from the National Science Foundation, UStream, and Vimeo.

So, if you’ve got a video camera—these days it might very well be doubling as your phone—please point it at whatever corner of citizen science catches your eye and share your masterpiece by uploading your files to YouTube with that “sci4cits” tag.

And if you’re a looker (you know you are), remember that the Video Gallery is now open. Please stay tuned.

Lenticular cloud in the Canary Islands. Photo by student meteorologist Mario M. Labrador, age 12.

As summer comes to a close, a young person’s fancy may turn to fretting at the thought of being cooped up in a classroom. But for fans of science and nature—and by that we mean kids who like to watch clouds, hunt mushrooms, prowl around graveyards, and check out what gets squashed on the side of the road—fall need not signal the end of fun.

To keep young minds entertained as well as enlightened, we recommend the following 10 back-to-school projects for student citizen scientists. Teachers and parents, please note: Many of these programs provide materials around which you can build lessons. And there are lots more where these came from.  Visit our Project Finder for a full list of citizen science projects for primary and secondary school students.

Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL): Report your observations of clouds—their shapes, height, coverage, and related conditions—so that NASA scientists can compare them with data from weather satellites passing over your area. Tutorials and observing guides are available for students. For teachers, the program provides lesson plans, charts, and advice on related educational standards.

Tracking Climate in Your Backyard: This project teaches volunteer meteorologists aged 8 to 12 about the scientific process by enlisting them in the collection of weather data in their communities. Download free support material and curriculum.

Gravestone Project: With Halloween less than two months off, here’s an appropriate activity for young citizen scientists: Map the location of cemeteries near you using a GPS device. Then, following instructions on the project website, measure the rate at which marble gravestones erode at each site due to weathering. You’ll be helping researchers determine changes in the acidity of rainfall between locations and over time.

Roadkill Project: From science in the cemetery, it’s a small hop over to science on the side of the road. In this project, students collect data on the presence of roadkill on a defined stretch of pavement. Comparing observations with those of their fellow roadkill researchers, participants learn about local animals’ habitats and migratory patterns, make predictions about which animals are at most and least risk of being killed by vehicles, and study the effects of geography and topography.

Stellar Classification Online Public Exploration: SCOPE needs citizen scientists to classify stars based on images of their spectra. After a quick registration and online tutorial, you can examine your first stellar spectrum and compare it to the “light signature” of well-known reference stars. Check out what high school student Eli Moorhouse wrote in our Member Blogs section about his recent adventures working on SCOPE.

Mushroom Observer: What weird and wonderful plants mushrooms are, not to mention numerous and mysterious. According to the Mushroom Observer project, “it is still a common experience to come across a mushroom that cannot be easily identified in the available books or which doesn’t really fit the definition of any recognized species.” Volunteers are invited to share observations, upload photos, and discuss findings with their fellow fungi fans.

Read the rest of this entry »

International Observe the Moon Night: September 18, 2010

You are cordially invited to what might be called a worldwide moon-up.

September 18 is International Observe the Moon Night, when, if the program’s organizers get their wish, people all over the world will collectively gaze up and admire the dry seas, mountain peaks, fields of rubble, and, of course, the craters of our planet’s closest celestial companion.

When you stop to think about it, it’s pretty amazing that we can look so directly into the face of another object in our solar system. Just a naked-eye view can be plenty dramatic. Add binoculars or a basic telescope, and suddenly you feel as if you’re hovering a few thousand feet over a stark and stunning extraterrestrial landscape. If you’ve never seen the moon this way, you owe it to yourself to find a viewing party on September 18.

As astronomy wonks know, it’s no accident that this event is scheduled for a night when the moon will be in “waxing gibbous” phase. At that time, the angle of the sun’s rays and the position of the “terminator,” the line that marks the transition from moon day to moon night, will make lunar features easy to pick out.

At a recent meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, NASA’s Brooke Hsu described the upcoming lunar meet-up as an extension of a much smaller event that she helped organize last year. Following the success of two lunar missions (the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite), NASA’s Ames Research Center in northern California and its Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland hosted simultaneous moon-watching parties in July 2009. The events went so well that plans were made to repeat them this year and to add a few more U.S. locations.

But then organizations all over the world got wind of the news and asked if they could join in. The momentum was irresistible, said Hsu, so International Observe the Moon Day was rushed into production by popular demand.

Want to set up your own moon-viewing party for September 18? The program ’s website provides advice, complete with templates for flyers and postcards to publicize the gatherings and a guide to help observers identify lunar features. Or you can search an interactive map for an observing event near you. The site also describes plans for a photo contest, live webcasting of public lectures, and other activities.

There’s even a line of observe-the-moon goodies to help commemorate the night: T-shirts, coffee mugs, water bottles. And, oh yes, beach bags, perfect for a September visit to the sea—whether it be terrestrial or lunar.

Can I pick your brain for a minute?

Next week I’m going to be part of a panel discussion on the topic of citizen science. It’s part of a joint conference of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the Geological Society of America titled ”Earth and Space Science: Making Connections in Education and Public Outreach.” To fuel that discussion I’d like to get your opinion on what makes a citizen science project successful for you, the participant.

If you’ve taken part in a project—or even if you’re just considering it—please share your thoughts by adding a comment here at the bottom of this post. I plan to refer to selected comments during the panel discussion. As an added nudge, I’ll award a free t-shirt to the authors of the three comments I deem to be most helpful and illuminating.

Many of the folks attending this conference are the scientists who actually dream up and design citizen science projects—so here’s your chance to influence their thinking and help shape new activities that you can take part in.

Please let me know what factors determine whether a project was (or would be) an effective and successful experience for you. In addition to your general thoughts, I’d like to know in particular:

• How important is it that you increase your own scientific knowledge as part of the project?
• How important is it that you contribute to scientific knowledge?
• Is it important to you that you do more than collect data (for instance, help analyze the data, help design the project, help disseminate the findings)?

Looking forward to your feedback.

By the way, if you’re in Boulder next week (that’s where the conference is) and want to chat about citizen science, just let me know. It would be great to connect.

A guided sky tour at New York's Hayden Planetarium.

While in New York last week, I dropped in at the Hayden Planetarium for a real treat: an old-fashioned sky show.

This was not your typical overwrought, highly digitized, celebrity narrated, long-on-glitz and short-on-insights production number that planetariums feel they have to create these days in order to get the public’s attention. This was a guided ramble through the night sky, delivered live and ad lib by an avuncular astronomical expert named Steve Beyer.

As the planetarium’s Zeiss Mark IX Star Projector dotted the dome above us with an exact replica of the stars as seen from Manhattan, Beyer strolled around in the dark focusing our attention with his laser pointer much as a small-town cop might show a visitor the highlights of his community on a night-time flashlight tour.

Just after sunset, he began, waving his laser low in the West, you can see Venus here, and then Mars and Saturn not far behind, here and here. Up above—right there—is the Big Dipper, which helps you find the North Star over here. He pointed out Vega, Deneb, and Altair, among the brightest stars in the sky, members of their own constellations (Lyra, the harp; Cygnus, the swan; and Aquila, the eagle), and markers of the very conspicuous stellar grouping known as the Summer Triangle.

Like any tour guide who really knows his subject, Beyer sprinkled in impressive nuggets of information as he went. One of my favorites: Arcturus, the brilliant orange star in the constellation Bootes, the herdsman, is actually an interloper. A refugee from another galaxy that collided with ours, Arcturus races through our celestial neighborhood powered by the original momentum of its long-gone parent.

Beyer also knew how to bring the stars down to earth. Throughout his life, he said, he has marked personal milestones and historical events by noting which constellation Jupiter is aligned with at the time; the planet moves into a new Zodiac “sign” every year, completing a full loop in 12.

The amazing thing? This old-fashioned sky show—free of computer-generated wormholes and Star Wars-inspired anthems and taking place on a Tuesday night at 6:30—nearly packed the planetarium. Must have been at least a couple hundred people there. Young couples, parents with their kids, business-type folks, “life-long learners,” retirees, and the obvious science enthusiasts (they did very well on the video quiz out in the waiting room before the show).

In its wisdom, the Hayden Planetarium offers this sort of straight-ahead guide to the constantly changing night sky on the last Tuesday of every month. On July 27, Joe Rao will present a program that includes a preview of the Perseids meteor shower, which takes place in August. On August 31, Ted Williams will help viewers visualize the galactic, ecliptic, and equatorial planes in the night sky.

Not exactly flashy stuff. But the thing about the night sky—the thing that these presenters and the planetarium management know—is that the night sky doesn’t need any hype. It’s incredible all on its own. As long as you know what to look for, and where to look for it.

And for that, all you need is a good old-fashioned sky show.

MoGO: Reporting oil spill damage by iPhone.

An important new citizen science project turned up in our database the other day—and it urgently needs volunteers.

MoGO, short for Mobile Gulf Observatory, is an iPhone app that enlists volunteers to record and report the damage of the Gulf Coast oil spill on the region’s wildlife and environment. It was created by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who developed it several weeks ago in a hurry. They submitted it to our Project Finder in order to quickly spread the word and encourage people in the Gulf Coast region to download the free app and start using it.

MoGO enables iPhone users to photograph and geotag oil spill problems in a variety of categories: oiled, injured, and dead marine and coastal wildlife, including fish, birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals; tar balls on beaches; oil slicks on water; and oiled coastal habitats. Users can add brief descriptive notes to their photos before submitting them. For crisis situations that may demand immediate responses, MoGO offers users the option to connect to a wildlife rescue hotline.

All of MoGO’s field reports are collected in a centralized website and displayed on an interactive map. The site is currently accessible to federal researchers and rescue workers. But soon the same information will be visible to the public on the site of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade.

The UMass scientists hope this “crowd-sourced” data will be valuable not only for gauging the oil spill’s impact but also for planning efforts to restore the region’s wildlife and ecology.

At the moment, though, MoGO needs a bigger crowd.

“That’s our first priority,” said Dr. Deepak Ganesan, an assistant professor at UMass Amherst’s department of computer science, when I spoke with him yesterday. “We need to get the word out for volunteers to contribute data. We need a lot more observations to make this large-scale, widespread coverage in order to help the recovery effort as well as to assess the impact.”

So if you have an iPhone and live in or will be traveling to the Gulf Coast, please consider downloading this app and keeping your eyes peeled.

I asked Ganesan about reports that “civilians” are increasingly restricted from visiting coastal areas affected by the oil spill. Wouldn’t that work against MoGO’s reliance on citizen scientists? He said he thought that many important areas were still accessible and added that volunteers can make an important contribution by identifying new trouble spots where the experts will need to go next.

Pointing the way—that sounds like the perfect role for citizen scientists.

REEF's volunteer divers survey fish.

As Memorial Day approaches and Americans slide into summer vacation, many are preparing to make the annual pilgrimage to the beach. While basting in the sun and ambling along a coastline, those with scientific leanings will inevitably tune into the surrounding natural environment—casually observing and appreciating the water, plants, fish, and other marine life.

So why not put those observations to use? We’ve mixed up a little surf and science cocktail for the lazy summer days ahead. Here are half a dozen citizen science projects you can participate in while at or near the beach:

REEF Fish Survey Project and Earthdive: The organizers of Earthdive ask, “What did you see on your last scuba dive, snorkel trip, or visit to the ocean?” After you record your observations of “key indicator species” in the global dive log, they are incorporated into a snapshot of ocean health in 30 eco-regions around the world. Similarly, REEF enlists divers to collect data on fish using a visual survey method specifically designed for volunteers and an underwater slate and pencil.  Findings are housed in a publicly-accessible database on REEF’s website and are used for public education and by a variety of resource agencies and researchers.

Shark Trust: Help this program build a database of shark sightings across the oceans. By submitting your sightings—not only of sharks but also of skates and rays—you  generate important data for marine researchers and conservationists working around the world.

JellyWatch: Have you seen a jellyfish on the beach? Report it here. Actually, you can report all sorts of ocean conditions to this public database: red tides, squid and mammal strandings, and other indicators of ocean health. All submitted data and photos are freely available for bulk download, so students, teachers, and scientists can conduct their own research using information gathered from around the globe. If you’ll be going on regular beach walks, boat rides, or underwater dives, you can save your default location to make it easy to record your sightings.

Citizen scientists monitor their beach for COASST. (Photo by Lois Miller)

Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team: “COASST” for short, this is a network of citizen scientists who conduct monthly surveys to monitor marine resources and ecosystem health at 300 beaches across northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. By collaborating with citizens, natural resource management agencies, and environmental organizations, COASST works to translate long-term monitoring into effective marine conservation solutions.

Harbor Porpoise Monitoring: Volunteers observe porpoises and conduct surveys at various locations near Anacortes, Whidbey Island, and San Juan Island in Washington state’s Puget Sound. Your efforts, which may be conducted on land or aboard a boat, will help document populations of the harbor porpoise, which have diminished dramatically in the last 60 years.

Community Aquatic Monitoring Program:  Volunteers help monitor the health and marine productivity of Canada’s water ecosystem by collecting biological data from small fish and crustaceans that are captured and released. In addition to identifying fish and crustacean species and counting their the numbers, participants measure water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen; describe aquatic vegetation; and collect sediment and water samples. The information you collect supports the research and monitoring work of academic and government scientists.

To find more watery science to do this summer, browse through the Ocean and Water category in our Project Finder. If you’d like to recommend other ocean-based projects, please add a comment here. And if you run such a project and need volunteers, please add the project to our listings.

Enjoy the summer—and don’t forget the sunblock.

Anza Borrego desert wildflowers. (Photo by Susan West)

This is going to sound odd, but I’m pretty sure I’m being stalked…by citizen science.

Ever since we launched Science for Citizens a few months ago, I find myself bumping into science and taking part in science-flavored activities no matter where I am or what I’m doing.

Take my recent trip to California’s Anza Borrego Desert State Park. My wife, Susan, and I spent five days hiking the trails and ogling the dramatic mountains surrounding the desert valley. And everywhere we turned, there it was: science—for citizens. (Cue the sneaky shark theme from “Jaws.”)

Item: Borrego Springs, the location of the park’s visitor’s center as well as our hotel, just happens to be the first town in California to be designated a “dark sky community.” (Who knew?) To keep the stars visible in the local sky, the town limits the number of street lights and requires that they all shine downward only. Guess what? There’s a citizen science project for that. It’s called Globe at Night and it enlists volunteers to record their observations of particular constellations in order to measure light pollution and raise awareness about the issue all over the world.

Item: We also just happened to be in this dark-sky Mecca at the very peak of the annual Lyrids meteor shower. Spending the wee hours of one morning sitting on a rock and staring up, I was rewarded with the sight of a meteoric torch dropping from the eastern sky. Not your typical now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t streaker, mind you, but a surreal, slow-motion, flickering flame-out of some interplanetary debris. It must have lasted five seconds. Quite a coincidence. Or was it?

Item: Turns out the desert was having another peak, this one during daylight hours. On our hikes, we were treated to the wildflower explosion that redecorates this tough terrain every year. We consulted our guidebooks to learn the names of the blossoms, and then we remembered—there’s a project for this, too: Project Budburst, which coordinates citizen naturalists’ observations of the season’s “first flowerings” and passes them along to scientists studying climate and the environment.

My new feathered friend, Phainopepla.

Item: We couldn’t help but become amateur experts of desert wildlife as well. Plump chuckwalla lizards skittered across our paths, rust-colored dragon flies buzzed about, and don’t get me started on the birds.

Oh, all right, one bird story: We’re standing in front of a Mesquite tree on a self-guided nature trail, reading about how this tree is often tangled up with clumps of Desert Mistletoe, the berries of which are the favorites of a bird known as Phainopepla. Though I admit to long-standing science geek tendencies, for some reason I’ve never gotten into birding, and making a new feathered friend in the wild has always seemed beyond my abilities—especially any friend with a name like Phainopepla. But as soon as we see this explanation in our pamphlet, as if on cue a pair of these birds flit in from nowhere and settle into the clot of Mistletoe in the Mesquite in front of us. Freaky. I remark that the male is a handsome, dark-gray cardinal look-alike—and all of a sudden, here’s me turning into a birder.

And yes, there’s a project for that. Back at the hotel, Susan and I couldn’t fight the compulsion to jump on the Wi-Fi and set up our very first online birding checklist at eBird. Now I’m not only the stalkee, I’m also a stalker. (Of birds, but still.) Read the rest of this entry »

To kick off the Biscayne BioBlitz, an animal rescue worker prepares to release a rehabilitated red-shouldered hawk.

Around noon today, a Florida wildlife rescue worker loosened his grip on a red-shouldered hawk that had been recuperating from a serious head injury over the past two months. As the surrounding crowd cheered, the bird took flight and soared through the skies over Biscayne National Park (see the video, below). This was the official start of an amazing citizen science event: BioBlitz 2010.

Following the send-off, hordes of volunteers set out through the park, trekking on land, wading into the water, and jumping off boats with their fins and snorkels. In a 24-hour blitz that ends Saturday at noon, they are working side-by-side with biologists and wildlife experts to inventory the area’s diverse plant and animal life.

Fish, invertebrates, mammals, microbes, fungi—you name it. If it’s growing, crawling, flying, or swimming in the park, these dedicated volunteers will find, assess, and record their observations about it.

If you’re nearby, there’s still time to drop in even if you haven’t preregistered: You can take part in nature walks, talks, and various entertaining events, and you may even be able to join an inventory team on the spur of the moment.

If you’re not within striking distance, the good news is that every year the National Geographic Society sponsors a BioBlitz at a different national park—so one may be coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Meantime, we can all follow the action in Florida, via blog dispatches, frontline photos and video, and the BioBlitz Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Here’s a glimpse of the take-off that marked the start of the blitzing earlier today. Truly “uplifting.”