project search results

Project MERCCURI is an investigation of how microbes found in buildings on Earth (in public buildings, stadiums, etc) compare to those on board the biggest building ever built in space – the International Space Station (ISS).

The project provides an opportunity for YOU-- citizen scientists and student scientists --to participate in the research by using kits we will send you to collect microbes from surface areas in buildings or even your own cell phone or shoes. You can form a team or join a team to collect samples through September 2013 with the help of the Science Cheerleaders (current and former NFL and NBA cheerleaders who are also scientists and engineers!).
Your samples will be mailed to the University of California Davis where they will be sequenced and analyzed. Results will be shared on SciStarter so you can compare your samples to those from other locations, including the International Space Station! In addition, up to 40 samples will be selected to fly on the International Space Station where their growth rates will be compared to their counterparts in the UCDavis lab! Wouldn't it be cool if your sample is sent to the International Space Station!?

Teachers: Meet the Project MERCCURI team at the National Science Teachers Association conference in San Antonio on April 11, from 2-3pm! Then, join us at the San Antonio Spurs game on April 12 as we collect microbes from the stadium to send to space!

We collected microbes from a Sacramento Kings and Orlando Magic games and now we invite you to join us at the following events (more will be posted on SciStarter.com/ISS):

April 11: National Science Teachers Association annual conference in San Antonio. From 2-3 pm, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, room 215. If you plan to be there, swing by, say hi, and learn how to get involved in Project MERCCURI to send microbes to space!

April 12: San Antonio Spurs game. Meet us on the court to collect microbes and shoot some baskets! The Spurs are offering discount tickets in addition to providing access to their court! Note: This game is almost sold out so consider purchasing your ticket soon.

April 12: We'll be at Yuri's Night parties celebrating the anniversary of manned space flight...and helping guests collect microbes from their own shoes and cellphones. Meet us at the Museum of Life and Sciences in Durham, NC, the Science Club in Washington, DC, and the California Science Center in L.A.

April 16: We'll be at the National Arts Building in New York City to celebrate Yuri's Night and collect more microbes.

April 20: Philadelphia Science Festival on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway! Stay tuned for more on that!

April 20-21: Calling all programmers! Help hack an app for Project MERCCURI at the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Philly!
If you can’t make it to one of these events, have no fear. We’re in the process of confirming similar events across the country and WE NEED YOU to help us collect microbes and, if you're interested, analyze the results. We will send periodic updates to you as new events are confirmed. We will also hold contests and other special offers to give you the chance to send your microbes to us from the comfort of your home.

The National Severe Storms Laboratory needs YOUR help with a research project!

If you live in the area shown on the map, the Precipitation Identification Near the Ground project (PING) wants YOU to watch and report on precipitation type.

PING is looking for young, old, and in-between volunteers to make observations—teachers, classes and families too! We have collected tens of thousands of observations since 2006, already making PING successful because of your help.

PING volunteers can spend a little or a lot of time making observations. The basic idea is simple: the National Severe Storms Laboratory will collect radar data from NEXRAD radars in your area during storm events, and compare that data with YOUR observations.

Why? Because the radars cannot see close to the ground, we need YOU to tell us what is happening. Scientists will compare your report with what the radar has detected, and develop new radar technologies and techniques to determine what kind of precipitation—such as snow, soft hail, hard hail, or rain—is falling where.

I need your help finding "Desmond," an Elderberry Longhorn Beetle, formally known as *Desmocerus palliatus!*

This *beautiful* beetle species used to live throughout a large part of eastern North America but in recent decades it appears as if it has declined in numbers. We need your help to figure out if and why this might be true and how we can help them move back into areas they once lived.

The Elderberry Longhorn Beetle is easy to spot with its bold patterns of blue and gold and long antennae. It's so attractive, in fact, that it was chosen for a USPS stamp design in 1999!

The Dark Sky Meter (available for iPhones) allows citizen scientists to contribute to a global map of nighttime light pollution. Light pollution is a growing problem in urban environments, but now you can help scientists better understand its effects on the environment. By utilizing the camera built in to your iPhone, the Dark Sky Meter actually measures ‘skyglow’ and updates the data in real time.

The Pro version of the app also charts weather conditions and cloud cover so you can take readings at optimal times. The app is as easy to use as taking a picture, and is a fun way to learn about your night sky.

How many stars can you see where you live? The Loss of the Night App (available for Android devices) challenges citizen scientists to identify as many stars as they can in order to measure light pollution. The app is fun and easy to use, and helps users learn constellations as they contribute to a global real-time map of light pollution.

Stargazing is a fantastic way to engage young scientists, but this ancient past time has become increasingly difficult in growing urban areas. Help scientists understand the effects of light pollution and learn about your night sky!

You don't need to leave the city to take part, in fact, the app is designed specifically for use in very polluted areas.

The more stars you observe, and the more often you run the app, the more precise the data for your location will become. As the seasons change so do the stars in the sky, and since there aren't so many very bright stars it is extremely helpful if urban users do measurements in each season.

iPhone users can contribute their own data via the dark sky meter project: http://www.scistarter.com/project/802-Dark%20Sky%20Meter

Anyone without a phone can take part during some parts of the year via GLOBE at Night: http://www.scistarter.com/project/169-GLOBE%20at%20Night

CyberTracker Conservation is a non-profit organisation that promotes the vision of a Worldwide Environmental Monitoring Network. Our ultimate vision is that smart phone users worldwide will use CyberTracker to capture observations on a daily basis.

CyberTracker is the most efficient method of gps field data collection. You can use CyberTracker on a Smartphone or handheld computer to record any type of observation. CyberTracker, which requires no programming skills, allows you to customize an Application for your own data collection needs.

The Marine Debris Tracker mobile application allows you to help make a difference by checking in when you find trash on our coastlines and waterways. Data you submit is available to download online and you also have access to mapping all data, worldwide. Marine Debris Tracker is a joint partnership of the NOAA Marine Debris Division and the Southeast Atlantic Marine Debris Initiative (SEA-MDI), located within the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia.

Welcome to OhDeer! Helping to map deer road casualties throughout Britain (or beyond!) via your Smart Phone.

The six species of deer living wild in Britain are our largest terrestrial mammals, ranging from the majestic red deer, to smaller fallow, roe, sika, muntjac and Chinese water deer. The large rise over the past 40 years in road traffic volumes as well as numbers and distribution of deer has unfortunately led to deer casualties at roadsides becoming an increasingly common sight. The total number of deer-vehicle collisions in Britain is estimated to exceed 42,000 per year, but most are not actually recorded. Information you log using this citizen-science smart phone app will assist our research on numbers and locations of deer accident hotspots.

AirCasting is a platform for recording, mapping, and sharing health and environmental data using your smartphone. Each AirCasting session lets you capture real-world measurements, annotate the data to tell your story, and share it via the CrowdMap.

Using the AirCasting Android app, AirCasters can record, map, and share:
(o) sound levels recorded by their phone microphone;
(o) temperature, humidity, CO and NO2 gas concentrations recorded by the Arduino-powered AirCasting Air Monitor, and;
(o) heart rate measurements recorded by the Zephyr HxM.

Using AirCasting Luminescence, these sensor streams can also be represented using LED lights.

The Astro Drone game is part of a scientific crowd sourcing project. People who possess a Parrot AR drone can play the game, in which they are challenged to perform different space missions in an augmented reality. Contribute to future space exploration by playing the free Astro Drone game!

The iPhone app is more than a game. Players can choose to contribute to a scientific crowd sourcing experiment that aims to improve autonomous capabilities of space probes, such as landing, obstacle avoidance, and docking. The app processes the images made by the AR drone's camera, extracting abstract mathematical image features. These features can neither be interpreted by humans, nor can the original image be reconstructed. However, the features can be used by robots to learn how to navigate in their environment. Players can join the experiment by going to the high score table. If they agree, the feature data is sent over the Internet.

The first release contains the training level, in which players learn to dock as well as possible to the International Space Station. New levels will be added incrementally with new releases.

AstroDrone is a project performed by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency.

Join seafarers in the global scientific experiment to study marine phytoplankton.

The phytoplankton underpin the marine food chain, so we need to know as much about them as possible. To participate in this project, you'll need to create a Secchi Disk, a tool that measures water turbidity, and use the free iPhone or Android ‘Secchi’ application.

You can take a Secchi Disk reading as often as you wish, every day, once a week, twice a month, or just occasionally. The data you collect will help scientists around the world to understand the phytoplankton.

Join in and help make this the world’s largest public marine biological study.

By just taking photos and observing spiders, you can help the Explorit Science Center learn about which climates certain spiders live in and track the distribution of spiders over time.

Join the Explorit’s Community Science Project by finding and recording spiders in your home or neighborhood (as many as you can!). Use your camera or smart phone to take a photo of the spider and submit it online to add to our geographical database.

Spiders have long been thought of a useful natural method of pest control, but how will expected temperature changes or other environmental changes affect the spider’s usefulness as pest-killers and their distribution?

We don't yet know how climate change will impact spiders, and in turn impact agriculture such as crops and farms- but when we understand where spiders are living today, we will be better able to predict what may happen to spiders and agriculture in the future.

Magpie Mapper is a smartphone app for recording observations of Magpies, one of the most fascinating and striking birds in the United Kindgom. When you see a magpie, simply log it on the app and your data will be used in our research into how birds are distributed throughout our towns cities and countryside.

With their long tails and impressive black and white plumage, magpies are unmistakable. Magpies are so ingrained in our folklorethat people often greet them with "Hello Mr Magpie!".

Now you can digitally salute a magpie with the Magpie Mapper app!

SatCam lets you capture observations of sky and ground conditions with a smart phone app at the same time that an Earth observation satellite is overhead.

When you capture a SatCam observation and submit it to our server, it helps us to check the quality of the cloud products that we create from the satellite data. In return, we send you the satellite image that was captured at your location, anywhere in the world! SatCam supports the Terra, Aqua, and Suomi NPP satellites.

SatCam was developed at the Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison .

A spectrometer is a ubiquitous tool for scientists to identify unknown materials, like oil spill residue or coal tar in urban waterways. But they cost thousands of dollars and are hard to use -- so the Public Lab community has designed its own.

This open hardware kit costs only $35, but has a range of more than 400-900 nanometers, and a resolution of as high as 3 nm. A spectrometer is essentially a tool to measure the colors absorbed by a material. You can construct this one yourself from a piece of a DVD-R, black paper, a VHS box, and an HD USB webcam.

Public Lab has also created open source software to collect, analyze, compare, and share calibrated spectral data. We've even made an experimental version which converts your cellphone into a spectrometer.

Public Lab community members have used this new tool to identify dyes in "free and clear" laundry detergent, to test grow lamps, and to analyze wines.

Now we need your help in collecting data to build a Wikipedia-style library of open source spectra, and to refine and improve sample collection and analysis techniques. We imagine a kind of "SHAZAM for materials" which can help to investigate chemical spills, diagnose crop diseases, identify contaminants in household products, and even analyze olive oil, coffee, and homebrew beer.

This smartphone app will help you explore habitats in your area and easily monitor wildlife populations by logging locations, photos, and responding to form questions all with the ease of your smartphone.

Roadkill smartphone app for citizen scientists that will help you monitor wildlife roadkill patterns in your area by logging locations, photos, and responding to form questions all with the ease of your smartphone.

Our volunteers monitor Atlantic coast beaches from Maine to Florida documenting seabird mortality events on any scale, from a single dead gull, to a mass die-off of shearwaters.
The data collected serves as baseline for comparison after oil spills or major disease outbreaks, and as a baseline resource on the impacts of offshore development projects (e.g. oil drilling or wind) on seabird populations.

Leafsnap is an exciting new mobile app that is designed to help citizen scientists identify and locate tree species from photographs and ultimately help the scientific world develop a better understanding of biodiversity. Developed by Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution, Leafsnap contains a unique visual recognition software that helps users identify species from the photographs taken straight from your iphone or ipad.

The app is completely free and will be the first in a series of apps that takes advantage of the newly developed recognition software. The app also contains high-resolution photos of the leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark of all sorts of species, and is a wonderful visual field guide. Currently, the species of New York City and Washington D.C. are supported, but this list will be expanded in the future.

The app is very user friendly and easy to use. With each photo of a leaf you take, the photo, species information, and geo-location is all automatically sent to the Leafsnap database for scientists to study species distribution.

This Leafsnap website shows the tree species included so far, a visual map of the collectors that have recently contributed, and more information on the project. Contributing to citizen science couldn’t be easier than with this visually engaging app! Get snapping and identify a tree near you!

Spy on nature, and contribute to science. Share photos and observations through SciSpy and you're contributing to research initiatives that rely on amateur participation. Created by Science Channel (Discovery), SciSpy enlists paticipants to document the natural world of their backyards, parks, cities, and towns. Photos and observation data are tagged and stamped with date, time and location information and will hopefully provide helpful information to track migrations, changes in the natural environment, seasonal trends and more.

Temperature Blast is a Maryland Science Center C3 Citizen Science project designed to introduce participants to methods of studying climate. Citizen Scientists collect live and archive Weatherbug data from select stations in the Baltimore region to compare temperatures and log this data for scientists.

Scientists at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study then use this data to test models of temperature patterns across the city to aid in urban planning. This data illustrates the Urban Heat Island effect on the area, a phenomenon classified by temperature differences between a metropolitan area and more rural landscape nearby. An Urban Heat Island is not an effect of climate change, but rather of our activity shaping the environment around us.

Using either this website or our Smartphone application (available free of charge for both iPhone and Android) Citizen Scientists submit temperature data from six weather stations in the Baltimore region. The purpose of this is to collect a stream of simultaneous data from multiple sites in and around the metropolitan area. This data, along with first-hand location observations, will be used to understand the Urban Heat Island Effect in Baltimore.

Anyone with access to the Internet and/or a Smartphone can be a Citizen Scientist and participate in Temperature Blast!? While the data obtained from the program is relevant to the Baltimore metropolitan region, there is no geographic or age restriction for Citizen Scientists.

Humans shed about 1.5 million microscopic skin cells, and ten times as many bacterial cells, every hour. These cells are transferred to numerous surfaces in a home via touch. What type of biological impression are we leaving on our home environments? If you are moving to a new home soon, then we need your help to find out.

We are looking for 20 people (four individual bachelors or bachelorettes between 18-30, four couples between 25-65, and two families with couples between 35-45 and two children 15 years old or younger) to participate in our study. Those relocating within the Chicagoland area are preferred, but all are welcome to apply. Households with cats, dogs, or uncaged birds are not eligible.

The goal of this study is to collect and examine the unique biological material shed by individuals throughout the normal course of a day to determine how rapidly their unique community of bacteria - called a microbiome - is established in their new home environment.

This study examines microbiota associated with the hands, feet, and nose of each individual, as well as those present on the most-often used doorknobs, light switches, floors, and countertops. You collect the data! ***This material is collected using swabs every other day for two weeks prior to moving, and four weeks following a move into a new home.*** All collection and storage materials will be provided to you. The research team will also ask you to note your cleaning schedule and some basic information about guests and visitors to the home for one month after moving in.

The results of this study will demonstrate the way in which we interact with the living surfaces of our home, and the fundamental impact humans have on the composition of microbes in their houses. The experimental design allows for a detailed examination of variables that make up the home environment, such as temperature and moisture, and how they favor different types of microbes shed by the human inhabitants.

Creek Watch is an iPhone application created by IBM Research that enables you to help monitor the health of your local watershed. Whenever you pass by a waterway, spend a few seconds using the Creek Watch application to snap a picture and report how much water and trash you see. We aggregate the data and share it with water control boards to help them track pollution and manage water resources. You can use the map on the left to explore the data that people have contributed, or see recent contributions as a table.

The Creek Watch App uses four pieces of data:

The amount of water: empty, some, or full.
The rate of flow: still, moving slowly, or moving fast.
The amount of trash: none, some (a few pieces), or a lot (10 or more pieces).
A picture of the waterway.

This data helps watershed groups, agencies and scientists track pollution, manage water resources, and plan environmental programs.

Creek Watch is a project developed at IBM Research - Almaden in consultation with the California State Water Resources Control Board's Clean Water Team.

The iPhone application is now available free on the iTunes store, so you can get started contributing data!

Bonaire National Marine Park needs your help to control the invasion of Lionfish. Volunteers in the Netherlands Antilles gently attach a marker on dead coral in the immediate vicinity of the Lionfish.

The Indo Pacific Lionfish Pterois volitans/miles is a predatory, venomous fish which has been introduced as an invasive species in the Atlantic Basin. This invasive carnivore can significantly reduce biodiversity of a local habitat and can drive important fish species to extinction, negatively affecting coral reef ecosystems.

WARNING: This project is potentially dangerous. Most of the fish's spines are venomous and can cause extreme pain!

LiMPETS (Long-term Monitoring Program and Experiential Training for Students) is an environmental monitoring and education program for students, educators, and volunteer groups. This hands-on program was developed to monitor the ocean and coastal ecosystems of California’s National Marine Sanctuaries to increase awareness and stewardship of these important areas.

Two distinct monitoring programs make up the core of the LiMPETS network: the Rocky Intertidal Monitoring Program and the Sandy Beach Monitoring Program. Both programs are designed to provide students with the opportunity to experience the scientific process firsthand. Through research-based monitoring and standardized protocols, students develop their problem solving skills, gain experience using tools and methods employed by field scientists, and learn to analyze data. The online data entry system allows our participants to archive their data electronically and to view and analyze their results over time.

The LiMPETS network provides authentic, hands-on coastal monitoring experiences that empower teachers, students and the community to conduct real science and serve as ocean stewards.

Redwood Watch needs volunteers to take photographs of redwood trees and submit them to researchers. Your data will help researchers understand where redwoods survive and help track redwood forest migration over time.

If you spot a redwood in a park, your own backyard, or in a botanical garden, snap a picture and submit it online. You can use a digital camera, or the Redwood Watch iPhone application, powered by iNaturalist.

Scientists don't yet know how climate change will impact the redwood forest. By understand where redwoods grow well today, scientists can better predict where the redwood forests of will thrive in the future. Join Redwood Watch and help redwoods survive!

The project is a partnership between the Save the Redwoods League, iNaturalist, Google Earth Outreach, and the California Academy of Sciences.

NoiseTube needs citizen scientists to monitor noise pollution. Participants install a free mobile application on their cell phone and measure the level of noise in their area.

Noise pollution is a serious problem in many cities. (Noise can change the balance in predator /prey detection and navigation among migratory species, among other detrimental effects.) This is your chance to turn your mobile phone into an environmental sensor and make an important contribution to science.

Your data will be shared with the NoiseTube community through a collective map of noise pollution. Local governments, city planners, researchers, and others will be able to access and analyze the data.

Wildlife Health Event Reporter (WHER) is an online, experimental reporting system for reporting and sharing the sightings of sick or dead wildlife.

Individual reports viewed together can lead to the detection and containment of wildlife disease outbreaks that may pose a health risk to people, domestic animals and other wildlife. For smart phone users, the HealthMap mobile phone application, Outbreaks Near Me, is also available. It captures the same information that the web-based WHER application collects and allows users to upload photos. WHER hopes to harness the power of the many eyes of the public to better detect wildlife disease phenomenon.

Additionally, WHER was developed by the Wildlife Data Integration Network (WDIN), a program of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in partnership with the USGS National Wildlife Health Center.

iSpot is a unique website where you can get the help of a friendly community to identify anything living that you have seen in nature. We are based in the UK, but observations from elsewhere are welcome.

You can add an observation to the website, suggest an identification, or see if anyone else can identify an observation for you.

Help others by adding an identification to an existing observation. Your reputation on the site will grow as others with knowledge agree with you identifications.

Ultimately, the data collected on iSpot are added to a central depository of biodiversity data held by the National Biodiversity Network

We have online keys (also available via web browsers on cell phones) that are designed to help you identify certain groups of species.

What are you waiting for? Get outside and make some observations. :)

With your help, OpenSignalMaps is creating a comprehensive database of cell phone towers, cell phone signal strength readings, and Wi-Fi access points around the world. This data is collected via an Android application and uploaded to the project's servers, taking care to use as little processing power and battery life as possible.

You can use the project website to browse the data they've collected, including heat maps that show exactly how strong signal is in any particular area, as well as all the nearby towers for your carrier. And don't worry -- the data is stripped of any identifying information and available on a graphical interface to enable you to make sense of the raw data.

WildObs (from "wildlife observations") participants capture memorable wildlife encounters and put them to work. Record your encounters for your own studies, or enjoyment. Use these records to develop you own wildlife calendar for the year. Maintain and grow your life-list, learn about new species and connect with nature.

Join the WildObs community via your Android or iPhone and use technology to help you connect with nature.

As a wildlife community, WilObs participants help each other find the nature (for a photograph or close encounter) and we learn about the species in our neighborhoods. WildObs is Collaborative wildlife enjoyment. It can help connect each other to wildlife.

Additionally, WildObs is a proud partner of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Watch, and works with a number of other scientific studies to extract citizen science from recorded encounters.

The goal of the project is to determine the linguistic landscape along I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis (Historic Route 66). We are using phone interviews and doing rapid anonymous studies, where one gets people to say certain words. The process involves asking people for free information in a way that encourages them to say certain words and you'll write down how they say it.

The mission of the Great Yew Hunt is to map the locations of ancient Yew trees across the UK and measure the girths of their trunks. The age of the Yew trees will then be estimated from looking at their girth measurements.

If you have an iPhone or Android Mobile--and an interest in tree hunting in the UK--you can help. Download the Epicollect application from iTunes (for iPhone users) or from the Android Marketplace (for Android Users). Once Epicollect has download, please load up the project 'YewHunting' and submit a photo and some basic information on the Yew tree you have found. This includes its Trunk girth measurement and the location in which the Yew tree has been found.

The Common Loon Citizen Science Project needs volunteers to conduct surveys at 45 high priority lakes in Glacier National Park to document presence of common loons and observations of breeding and nesting behaviors.

Common Loons are a Montana Species of Special Concern, and Glacier National Park harbors about 20 percent of Montana’s breeding pairs. Since 1988, data has been collected once every year during Loon Days. Analysis of these data indicate lower reproductive rates for pairs in the park compared to the rest of Montana. Finally, there is evidence that loons are adversely impacted by human disturbance at nest and nursery sites.

The Common Loon Citizen Science Project educates park staff and volunteers on successful identification and observation techniques when surveying for loons in hopes of increasing our understanding of this species. By improving accuracy of sightings and surveys and increasing coverage of lakes with loons throughout the nesting season, the project aims to gather season-long information to gain a better estimate of the health of Glacier National Park's loon population. The project will also use the data to begin to identify factors affecting nesting success.

Since 2005 the Glacier National Park Citizen Science program has enlisted trained park visitors, staff and volunteers to collect scientific information that would otherwise be unavailable to resource managers and researchers due to lack of personnel or funding. For citizen scientists, the rewards are a sense of stewardship and a greater awareness and understanding of the park’s resource issues. For the park, it provides a wealth of data which can be used to increase understanding of our natural resources, offering an opportunity to get much-needed baseline information about key plant and animal species.

SKYWARN is a national network of volunteer severe weather spotters. The spotters are trained by local National Weather Service Forecast Offices on how to spot severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, and flooding. In some parts of the country, spotters also report snowfall and ice accumulation.

During hazardous weather, such as severe thunderstorms, floods, tornadoes, snow and ice storms, SKYWARN volunteers report what is happening at their location. They are asked to report whenever certain criteria are met such as when one inch of rain has fallen, four inches of snow is on the ground, a thunderstorm is producing hail, or trees have been blown down.

Reports arrive at the forecaster's office via the telephone, fax, Internet, and amateur radio. The reports are combined with radar and satellite data to determine what the storms will do next. Spotters provide the "ground-truth" to forecasters. Radar may tell us that heavy snow is falling, but it can not tell us how much snow is on the ground or if rain is mixing with the snow. Spotters do. The reports are used by forecasters to send out public statements, warnings and advisories, and short-term forecasts.

Two-thirds of SKYWARN volunteers are licensed amateur radio operators. Amateur radio plays a big role in the SKYWARN program. During severe weather, amateur radio volunteers man a radio station at our office. They talk to our spotters in the particular area that a storm is hitting and request information needed by the forecasters such as hail size or rainfall accumulation. Large storms such as hurricanes can knock out phone service. SKYWARN amateur radio volunteers help us when there are communications outages so that we can continue to receive weather reports and feed warnings and other critical information out to communities.

SKYWARN volunteers are people who either have a strong interest in weather or are public service oriented. This includes amateur radio operators, REACT members, or emergency response personnel. Our spotters are all ages beginning as young as 14 and range well into retirement age. We have farmers, pilots, engineers, housewives, lawyers, television cameramen, teachers, students, firemen, and more. Our volunteers are truly diverse but with a common interest in weather and a strong desire to help their community.

The WildLab engages citizen scientists in bird and other wildlife identification, using mobile phones as tools of scientific discovery. Along with associated curricula and educational activities found on its website, the WildLab is a powerful new way to see the environment.

The WildLab Bird iPhone app includes photographs, audio, and range maps for more than 200 common bird species. The app helps users make correct identifications by leading them through a process of elimination. The application saves each sighting with location and other data, and sightings are logged in the user’s online WildLab account. Files based on a user's sightings can be easily loaded into Cornell Lab of Ornithology's eBird database.

In a pilot program developed with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, more than 500 New York City 5th- through 12th-grade students used iPhones to log thousands of bird sightings from nearby parks and green spaces. Participants in the project increased their knowledge as well as their interest in science careers. All educators involved in the project said they would participate again if it was offered in the future.

The WildLab has also piloted a program with the Cornell Cooperative Extension for horseshoe crab monitoring; this app will be available soon in the app store. Through collaborations with science education institutions around the country, the WildLab continues to develop new apps and will run its in-school bird program this fall.

Noah is a mobile phone app that allows nature lovers to document local wildlife and add their observations to a growing database for use by ongoing citizen-science projects.

Using the Noah mobile application, users take a photograph of an interesting organism, select the appropriate category, add descriptive tags, and click submit. The application captures the location details along with the submitted information and stores all of it in the species database for use by efforts such as Project Squirrel and the Lost Ladybug Project.

In addition, users can see what kinds of organisms are nearby by searching through a list or exploring a map of the most recent spottings in their area, all on a mobile phone.

Noah is all about discovering and documenting local wildlife. We work with research groups and organizations to help gather important data and we want you to help by logging recent spottings on your mobile phone. Missions can range from photographing specific frogs or flowers to tracking migrating birds or invasive species or logging the effects of the oil spill.

The Dragonfly Monitoring Network is a citizen-scientist program that monitors the health of dragonfly populations throughout the Chicago area. This program represents an important step in collecting data on insect populations and their response to land management techniques.

Volunteers will be trained to collect and submit data each summer from an assigned site. They commit to:

- attendance of one Spring Workshop a year

- learning to identify key dragonfly and damselfly species

- conducting at least six site visits between late May and late September

- spending one to two hours walking the route during each visit

- submitting data sheets at the end of the season, which are then added to the project database

With your help, the Dragonfly Monitoring Network hopes to gain a greater knowledge of the distribution and abundance of dragonfly and damselfly species in the Chicago region and eventually to expand the network across Illinois and beyond.

Collect Gulf Oil Spill data using your iPhone. MoGO (Mobile Gulf Observatory) is an app that turns you and your iPhone into a "citizen scientist" helping wildlife experts find and rescue oiled birds, sea turtles, and dolphins.

The MoGO app allows you to take and submit photos of oiled, injured, and dead marine and coastal wildlife; tar balls on beaches; oil slicks on water; and oiled coastal habitats.

Bird Ringing at the British Trust for Ornithology is a network of more than 2,500 trained and licensed volunteers in the United Kingdom that ring--or tag--more than 900,000 birds every year.

Bird ringing involves the fitting of small, uniquely numbered metal rings on the legs of birds. By identifying these birds as individuals, researchers can start to understand changes in the survival and movements of bird populations.

Bird ringers come in many types, from individuals working in urban areas to large groups working in a wide geographic area, and can start at any age. Though you definitely don’t need to be a bird expert to ring, it does help if you have some prior bird knowledge. Anyone who wants to participate in the project will need to gain field experience with a qualified trainer.

You’ll no doubt find that ringing is a very satisfying activity. Not only will you be adding to 100 years of data used directly by conservationists, but you will also enjoy the experience of seeing birds close up. Whether you want to train to ring birds in nest boxes, gardens, or a local gravel pit, your contribution is vital to the project's success.

Garden BirdWatch needs citizen scientists in the United Kingdom to gather information on how different species of birds use gardens and how this use changes over time. Gardens are an important habitat for many wild birds and provide a useful refuge for those affected by changes in the management of the countryside. The data gathered in this project enables researchers at the British Trust for Ornithology to monitor the changing fortunes of garden birds.

Some 16,000 participants currently take part in Garden BirdWatch. Participants send in simple, weekly records of bird species that they see in their gardens. This information is either submitted on paper count forms or by using Garden BirdWatch Online. Each participant also supports the project financially through an annual contribution of £15 (approximately $22). In return, participants receive the quarterly color magazine, Bird Table, count forms, and access to advice on feeding and attracting garden birds.

All new joiners will receive a free copy of an exclusive paperback version of the acclaimed "Garden Birds and Wildlife" (normally £14.99).

Orca Project volunteers in Port Townsend, Washington document orca bones for an online bone atlas, assist in orca education with children's groups, take part in assembling a full-size skeleton for display, participate in the design of a new orca exhibit and conduct research on underwater sounds using a hydrophone.

The project’s goals are to improve public awareness of the challenges faced by killer whales--toxic contamination, underwater noise pollution, and diminishing food supplies in the Puget Sound--as well as develop an appreciation for the whales’ remarkable social bonds and communication abilities.

Funded by the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, other organizations, and matching funds, the Orca Project will focus on both the transient and resident killer whales seen in the Northwest United States.

The Orca Project will also offer public lectures, free science classes for Olympic Peninsula students, tours of articulated whale skeletons for school classes, hands-on activities for after-school groups, Bring Your Bones Day (a community event with resident experts helping identify and reveal the mysteries of bones), and focused outreach to the maritime and marine community of Port Townsend, Washington.

Volunteers for the East Jefferson County Marine Mammal Stranding Network collect data on dead, stranded, or abandoned marine mammals at selected Washington State beaches. Participants also "pup sit" seal pups while they are being weaned onshore in order to keep curious dogs and humans at a safe distance while the mother seal hunts.

Volunteers sign up to cover particular beaches and are trained to respond and collect vital data that can be used to establish baseline information on marine mammal communities. The data will be used by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other organizations.

The Salish Sea Hydrophone Network needs volunteers to help monitor the critical habitat of endangered Pacific Northwest killer whales by detecting orca sounds and measuring ambient noise levels. Volunteers are especially needed to help notify researchers when orcas are in the Salish Sea, which encompasses the waters of Puget Sound and the surrounding area.

Sponsored by a coalition of organizations, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Whale Museum in Olympia, Washington, the network consists of five hydrophones, each hooked up to a computer to analyze the signal and stream it via the internet.

Even though software is used to distinguish animal from other underwater sound, human ears do a better job. So volunteers monitor the network from their home computers anywhere in the world, and alert the rest of the network when they hear whale sounds. Sometimes boats or onshore monitors are deployed to observe the whales while they are making sounds. Researchers hope to learn more about the uses of orca communications and whale migration patterns.

South American Wildlands and Biodiversity needs volunteers to help identify, describe, and protect wildland complexes and roadless areas in South America.

Volunteers will use Google Earth to identify and map existing roads in areas of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. Volunteers are needed who have access to Google Earth and are comfortable working on computers.

In addition, field volunteers are needed in South America to visit these areas on the ground and confirm the accuracy of the maps. Some of the more specialized tasks that field volunteers will perform include the use of global positioning system (GPS) and geographic information system (GIS) equipment, as well as recording photographs and notes about the areas visited.

The wildlands of South America present one of the most important reservoirs of biodiversity on the planet. Mapping South American Wildlands is an ambitious project of the Pacific Biodiversity Institute, with Latin American conservation partners, to map all the wildlands in South America, to evaluate their contribution to global biodiversity, and to share and disseminate this information.

This project will first focus on mapping and analyzing the roadless/undeveloped areas in the southern cone countries (Chile and Argentina) using a procedure that the Pacific Biodiversity Institute developed to map the wildlands of the United States in 2001.

The Western Gray Squirrel Project needs volunteers to assist with surveys of this species' population in the Methow Watershed in Washington State.

The western gray squirrel is listed as threatened in Washington State, and the Methow Valley area is home of one of the last three populations remaining in the state.

The main goal for this project is to conduct distribution surveys and relative abundance estimates that will augment work being conducted by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. This effort will further scientific knowledge about gray squirrel distributions throughout the Methow Valley.

Another goal is to conduct outreach to private landowners about western gray squirrel habitat and to educate the local community about the status of, threats to, and conservation needs of the squirrel.

There is potential for this project to lead to further work on western gray squirrels and other aspects of conservation science.

Volunteers are provided with equipment and training to collect and process lake water quality samples 8 times each season. Volunteers also take temperature and water clarity measurements in the field at each sampling event. The sampling and processing takes about an hour.

Processed samples are stored by the volunteer until LMVP staff collect them for analysis at the University of Missouri's Limnology Laboratory. At the lab, samples are analyzed for total phosphorus, total nitrogen (plant nutrients), chlorophyll concentration (an estimate of algal biomass) and inorganic suspended solids (sediments).

Use your mobile phone to help us locate invasive plants!

Invasive weeds are a significant threat to native plants and animals. Although most non-natives are not considered "invasive", those that crowd out food sources for wild animals, create erosion, or act as a significant fire hazard can be considered a threat and need to be identified and located for removal. You can help!

Then, using your Android mobile phone, help us locate invasive plants in an expanding number of locations across the US, or you can create your own list of plants that you want help in locating.

Our iPhone app currently works only in the Santa Monica National Recreation Area but is being updated soon.

The plants you identify will be placed on public map and alert park rangers of the spread of these habitat-destroying plants.

You can also participate using any mobile phone with text or picture messaging, email, or our web forms and a digital camera.

EpiCollect is a mobile phone application that allows professional and citizen scientists to gather, submit, and access research data through a central web database. The software is powered by Google Maps and Android, Google's open-source operating system.

EpiCollect was designed for epidemiological and ecological studies but has potential for a number of other fields, including economics, public health, and resource allocation. Individual users can input data (variables, photos, location, etc.) into EpiCollect from their mobile phone, which is synchronized to a central database. An accompanying web application provides a common location for mapping, visualization, and analysis of the data by everyone involved in the study.