Studying gravestones to track changes in Earth’s chemistry. Call for volunteers! EarthTrek presents a global Gravestone Project.

This project aims to map the location of a graveyards around the globe and then use marble gravestones in those graveyards to measure the weathering rate of marble at that location.The weathering rates of gravestones are an indication of changes in the acidity of rainfall between locations and over time. The acidity is affected by air pollution and other factors, and could be used as a measure of changes in climate and pollution levels.

While we most commonly associate Google with its ability to search the Intertubes for our favorite science FAILs, the tech giant is also opening new doors for citizen science. A recent article in the Public Library of Science (PloS) ONE highlights a new mobile phone application, powered by Google Maps and Google’s Android operating system, that allows professional and citizen scientists to gather, submit, and access research data from the field.

The application, called EpiCollect, was initially designed for epedimiological and ecological studies but has potential for a number of other fields, including economics, public health, and resource allocation. Individual users can input data records (variables, photos, GPS location, etc) into EpiCollect from their mobile phone, which is synchronized to a central database. An accompanying web application, located at www.spatialepidemiology.net, provides a common location for mapping, visualization, and analysis of the data by everyone involved in the study. The two-way connectivity between the EpiCollect mobile application and the central database could increase the collection and collation of data for community projects, particular in resource-limited areas.

Importantly, EpiCollect was developed as a free software using Google’s open-source Android operating system. Anyone interested in using the software is encouraged to contact David Aanensen in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London.  The EpiCollect website also provides three sample epidemological datasets and a facility to geocode your own spatial data.

Do you ever wonder what is really coming out of the faucet when you turn on your water?  If you participate in World Water Monitoring Day on September 18, you will be one step closer to finding out!  World Water Monitoring Day is an international education and outreach program that protects the quality of local water resources around the world by enlisting citizen volunteers to conduct basic monitoring of their local water bodies.  This project is organized by the Water Environment Federation (WEF) and the International Water Association (IWA), and they hope to expand participation to one million people in 100 countries by 2012.

Though there are celebrations being held in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta this year on September 18, anyone can organize their own event right in their neighborhood.  An easy-to-use test kit enables everyone from children to adults to sample local water bodies for a core set of water quality parameters including temperature, acidity (pH), clarity (turbidity) and dissolved oxygen (DO). Each test kit, which is recommended to be used in a group of no more than 5-10 people, contains:

• 1 Instruction booklet (English/Spanish)
• 1 Sample collection jar
• 1 pH test tube
• 1 Dissolved oxygen vial
• 1 Secchi disk decal
• 2 Temperature strips (14-40°C and 0-12°C)
• 50 pH reagent tablets (enough for 50 tests)
• 100 Dissolved oxygen reagent tablets (enough for 50 tests)
• 1 Color chart for determining DO, pH and turbidity test results
• 1 Mini pencil
• 1 Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)

The results of the study are then reported through the World Water Monitoring Day website. Though World Water Monitoring Day is officially celebrated on September 18, the monitoring window has extended for the first time this year from March 22 (World Water Day) until December 31. Participants are encouraged to celebrate anytime during the extended window, making this a perfect project for classrooms this fall!  (All the materials are even included, so schools and/or their teachers will not have to shell out extra dollars for supplies.)

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: water, analytical chemistry
• Location: at home, close to home
• Duration: until December 31, but if you are going to a local river or stream, probably in the warmer months!
• Cost: free
• Gear:  A test kit, which you can order here
• Level of Difficulty: easy

Citizen Science report from Science Cheerleader reporter Dr. John Ohab.
Are you interested in giving back to the community and advancing environmental science education? Become an EnvironMentor!

EnvironMentors is a mentoring program that helps prepare high school and college students for careers in environmental and related fields. Together, students and mentors develop environmentally-based science projects comprised of hands-on experiments and a scientific research paper. The year-long program culminates with a poster presentation at the annual EnvironMentors Science Fair, during which students are eligible to compete for college scholarships.

Important point: expertise in environmental science or previous mentoring experience is NOT a requirement for participation; hence, why I was able to participate in last year’s Washington, D.C. EnvironMentors program (I had no expertise and limited mentoring experience).

My student, Lalaram, was particularly interested in how microwave radiation impacts living organisms, specifically plant growth. We conducted background research and found that this very topic was the focus of NASA researcher, Dr. JW Skiles, who is investigating the long-term effects of continuous microwave energy illumination of the biosphere. That was pretty much all we needed to design a year-long research project that asked: “Do Microwaves Affect Plants?”

Our experimental design was simple, yet thorough: three groups (water, soil, and wheatgrass seeds) received increasing amounts of microwave exposure (control, 15s, 30s, 1min, 2min, and 4min). In the water condition, microwave-treated water was administered to our wheatgrass on each watering day. In the soil and seed conditions, the soil and wheat grass seeds were microwaved once at their respective exposure time and given regular control water thereafter. We had three measures: 1) the day that sprouts first emerged from the soil, 2) the length of each blade of wheatgrass over time, and 3) the percentage of seeds that sprouted. In other words, we got to microwave the living crap out wheatgrass seeds and “see what happened”.

It was a challenging and rewarding year for both Lalaram and me. He demonstrated persistence, fought through a number of technical challenges, and ultimately produced a final paper and presentation worthy of a college student. As I watched Lalaram grow, I learned a great deal about what it takes to motivate someone, to inspire them to contribute their strengths, and to pursue endeavors that seem at the time beyond their abilities. It was an enormously satisfying experience from start to finish.

If you’re interested in participating as a mentor or a student, I encourage you to check out the EnvironMentors homepage and the seven university chapters, which include Alabama State, Colorado State, NC State, Colleges of Fenway, UC Davis, University of Nebraska and Arkansas State.

Project Snapshot:
Topics: environmental science, mentoring
Location: multiple locations throughout country
Duration: academic calendar
Cost: free or low cost
Gear: computer, scientific supplies
Level of Difficulty: moderate-difficult

Proteus Gowanus is calling all citizen scientists in the area to help them map out the distribution of crickets and katydids throughout the five boroughs of New York City on September 11, 2009 (rain date: September 12, 2009) from dusk to 1:00 am.  Crickets and katydids, like many of the other natural creatures I have blogged about in the past, are part of urban ecosystems, but are fading fast as their resources disappear.  Creating a distribution map of their locations through New York City will speak volumes about the types of habitats needed to sustain their survival.

Very little training is required to discern a cricket call versus that of a katydid, but the organizers will be providing a brief online training for participants prior to the crawl, as well as in-person demonstrations at the headquarters before the crawl begins.  Throughout the evening, volunteers would listen for the calls of crickets and katydids and document their observations with pencil and paper. (Or, those citizen scientists that are more technically saavy than I am can ditch their pencil and paper and submit their findings via text messaging for real-time analyses at Cricket Crawl headquarters.)

Signing up for the crawl is easy!  Just e-mail cricket_crawl@yahoo.com for more details.  Also, if you are interested in volunteering beyond just recording the calls of crickets, you can play a larger role in the organization of Cricket Crawl by creating a Cricket Crawl website, Facebook page, or a Twitter network.  And for those citizen scientists with an artistic side, Proteus Gowanus is also looking for artists to create pieces in connection with the crawl that could be posted in an online gallery.  Interested artists should e-mail info@proteusgowanus.com for more details.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: crickets, urban ecosystems
• Location: at home or close to home, if you live in NYC
• Duration: one starry night, from dusk to 1 am
• Cost: free or low cost
• Gear: pencil and paper, and/or a phone with text messaging capability
• Level of Difficulty: easy

Sarah’s cut the clutter to help us recycle old cell phones and computers. Here’s the newly married Sarah:

I recently switched cell phone providers, and my old cell phone is currently residing in the junk drawer of my kitchen.  A mostly broken laptop from my undergraduate years takes up valuable space in my bedroom closet.  (I won’t even get into the boxes in our attic that my husband has dedicated to old electronics and wires…)  But we are not alone – the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that over 500 million cell phones alone collect dust in desk drawers or other storage spots around our homes!  Even worse, some Americans clear out their clutter by simply throwing these items away, sending them (and the toxins they are made out of, like lead and arsenic) straight to landfills and into our soil and drinking water.

For those readers who missed spring cleaning season this year, as I did, I suggest that this week’s citizen science task should be recycling these electronic items properly.  Many websites out there will even pay you to recycle!  I’ve done some homework to help you out:

• Gazelle is the most comprehensive website I have found in my research.  This website accepts everything from laptop computers to old graphing calculators.  Though they do not offer a check for every single gadget you could send, most items yield money back ranging from $11 – $200, and any electronic item can be recycled via a postage-paid box regardless of whether or not it still has value.  A search engine on their site allows the user to input items they have to recycle, assess their condition, and receive reimbursement amounts.  I found this site incredibly easy to use.
• GreenPhone also offers recycling for money, but this site is for cell phones exclusively.  Much like Gazelle’s webpage, anyone can search for a free quote for their particular cell phone model and mail it in using a box with pre-paid postage. However, this website will not recycle phones that do not have a market value.  Instead, visit their sister site, CollectiveGood, which collects donated cell phones for charitable causes, or visit any local Staples stores to find donation bins for charities in your area.
• You can also donate your cell phone to Cell Phones for Soldiers.  This charity website receives the proceeds from recycling old cell phones and uses the money for buying calling cards for soldiers overseas.
• PetSmart has a Recycle for Life campaign that allows users to either recycle their own cell phones and ink-jet cartridges or purchase those that have been recycled already.  For everything donated, PetSmart will receive $2-$15 towards caring for homeless pets, and for everything purchased a $2-$5 donation.
• Craigslist can be a great way to sell items that are still in good, working condition, though it is important to be safe when making transactions.  One advantage to using this website is that you can set your own values for the items you are selling, ensuring that you recover more of your initial costs.

Happy recycling!

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

Topics: recycling, electronics

Location:  Your closets and drawers

Duration:  Periodically

Cost:  Free – or you may even make some extra cash!

Gear: old electronics, computer with internet

Level of Difficulty: easy

From Dr. John…Looking for a fun way to translate your love of pignut hickory (Carya glabra) into scientific data that can help the planet? Look no further than the National Phenology Network (NPN), an organization that calls on citizen scientists to monitor the influence of climate change on plants and animals in the US.

NPN defines phenology as the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events, such as the first flower on a plant, the appearance of a songbird species in spring, or the changing leaves in fall. Phenological events are particularly sensitive to climate variations (e.g., temperature), and shifts in timing can dramatically affect the planet’s ecological systems. That, in turn, can affect the way we live – allergies, recreation, farming, and our ability to respond to natural disasters are all impacted by phenology.

NPN harnesses the power of citizen scientists and the Internet to collect, share, and store information on patterns of phenology for 200 critical plant species across the nation. NPN will use your contributions to help scientists identify which species are changing, and ultimately, better predict the impact of changing phenologies on natural systems and people. Do this immediately:

1. Select your favorite plant.
2. Learn about site selection, plant marking, and phenological observations.
3. Join the network and become an official participant.
4. Start observing, collecting, and reporting.
5. Feel a sense of personal satisfaction and enrichment.

At this time, citizen scientists can only monitor plant species. However, in 2010, NPN will welcome observations for many species of animals, including yellow-bellied marmots, hummingbirds, wood frogs, bumblebees, and all of your favorite Disney characters.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: Biology, Computers and Technology
• Location: at home, close to home
• Duration: any
• Cost: free
• Gear: no
• Level of Difficulty: easy

Here’s Dr. John Ohab, reporting for Science Cheerleader.com as part of an original series of first-person citizen science reports!

Trees are good. They provide shade, recycled paper, wood, and probably other things. In fact, trees are the only living organisms on earth that cannot possibly do anything bad. In Medieval times, trees could talk, walk, and transport miniature people to different places. However, global warming, industrialization, and other human factors have contributed to a more vulnerable and quite stationary tree population.

Enter Casey Trees, a DC-based non-profit organization dedicated to restoring, enhancing, and protecting the tree canopy of our Nation’s Capital. Casey Trees leverages community volunteers known as “Citizen Foresters”, who employ basic forestry skills, lead teams of volunteers during weekend events, and advocate for a green, sustainable city.

Last weekend, I took part in a Casey Trees tree and shrub inventory. I talked with Casey Trees employees and Citizen Foresters and learned what motivated citizens are doing to improve our environment. Check out the above Science Cheerleader report!

Casey Trees offers many opportunities for citizen scientists interested in the environment, including their Trees 101 course, design and planting workshops, and urban forestry inventory training. For more information, visit the Casey Trees website.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: Environment, Nature and Outdoors
  
• Location: close to home
• Duration: several hours per event
• Cost: free
• Gear: provided on site
• Level of Difficulty: easy – moderate

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has dedicated itself to interpreting and conserving the diversity of nature’s bird population through research, education, and citizen science projects.  Though I encourage you all to check out their website for more information on all of the exciting research going on in the Cornell laboratories, today I would like to highlight one of the ways you can help as citizen scientists.

One of the major projects at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology involves NestCams, which record live images of birds courting, mating, laying eggs, and raising young.  These cameras record a variety of bird species, including Northern Cardinals, Osprey, Blue Jays, and American Robins (to name a few).  As a scientist myself, I can attest that sometimes the hardest thing about science is not collecting data, but analyzing it.  And as you can imagine, with images recording around the clock, these scientists at Cornell collect a lot of data to classify and analyze!  This is definitely one way that citizen scientists continue to be essential for the success of the NestCam project.  The Cornell scientists have created CamClickr, which is a completely online-based citizen science project to help them classify their tremendous archives of video and still images.  Users simply log on to the CamClickr site and then choose the species and phase of the nesting cycle they want to start classifying.  It’s that easy!  User tagging and coding for species and nesting cycles occurs in two phases.  In phase one, users drag and drop images into photo albums that are classified according to presence or absence of nests, adult birds, eggs, or baby birds.  Once 99 images have been classified, users can then move on to phase two, where all images that passed through Level 1 are classified according to pre-defined behaviors.

Top “CamClickrs” are rewarded for their efforts – one point is awarded for every successful classification, and those points can add up to prizes!

P.S.  The image above is from a coloring book – happy coloring, kids of all ages!

Statistics from previous years:  Since 1999, NestCams have documented 90 nesting attempts by 17 bird species across North America.  That is a lot of data!  Hundreds of thousands of images have since been classified by citizen scientists like you and me.  Today’s top CamClickr is user name Claire K, with over 188,000 images classified!  Can you beat her?

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: birds, ecology, nesting cycle
• Location: at home or close to home
• Duration: a few minutes, whenever you can veg in front of your computer
• Cost: free or low cost
• Gear: a computer with internet access
• Level of Difficulty: easy

Squirrels live in small areas of our neighborhoods year round and don’t hibernate, though they often go unnoticed as we humans carry on our daily lives.  However, you might say that squirrels and people have a lot more in common than any of us probably realize when we see one interrupting our picnics or scurrying across a sidewalk.  Like us, squirrels are creatures of habit, using the same sources of food, water, and shelter almost every day in order to survive.  By studying the appearance of squirrels, scientists also gain a lot more insight into our own habitats.  If squirrel populations fluctuate over the course of a year, this can tell a story about the changing ecology of a neighborhood.

Project Squirrel, a project sponsored by the Chicago Academy of the Sciences and the University of Illinois of Chicago, is trying to understand urban squirrel biology as applied to a larger “urban game park,” including everything from squirrels to migratory birds, nocturnal mammals, and secretive reptiles and amphibians.

To gain data on squirrel populations across the United States, Project Squirrel is calling all citizen scientists to count the number of squirrels in their neighborhood and report their findings.  Citizen scientists will also be asked, when possible, to distinguish between two different types of tree squirrels – gray and fox.  According to Steve Sullivan, the mechanism of co-existence between squirrel species can help tell an interesting story.  Depending on the levels of predation, housing, food, and other factors, the relative abundance of these two species will fluctuate.  This, in turn, tells an interesting story about ecological interactions affecting not just squirrels but many other local animals as well.

Project Squirrel is designed so that anyone of any age can participate, and could be incorporated into all of our daily routines without much disruption.  Squirrels are very easy to see and identify without extensive effort for citizen scientists.  More importantly, citizen scientists can gather data over a much broader region than what scientists alone could cover.

Also, Steve and his other scientists are not just studying squirrels – they will also be studying US.  The scientists at Project Squirrel are also going to use this project to understand the effect that participation in citizen science has on participants (this will be tested through an upcoming portion of their web site that is not yet published).  I have a feeling their conclusions are going to be very positive!  And so, getting involved and documenting your experience will also help provide information that can be used to recruit other citizen scientists to action!

Many thanks to Steve Sullivan for suggesting this project and contributing a tremendous amount of information to this article.  Again, I encourage all readers to contribute their citizen science ideas here.

Statistics from previous years:  Project Squirrel was founded in 1997 by Wendy Jackson and Joel Brown, and since then has had over 1000 participants provide observations.  This is a large number, but not large enough – I challenge our Science Cheerleader community to double this number in the next two years! Simply because of Project Squirrel’s resource constraints, this project is focused on the Chicago Wilderness biogeographical region – Chicago and its the surrounding suburbs in southern Wisconsin, northern Indiana, and southern Michigan.  However, it is a useful project anyplace there are tree squirrels.  People from all parts of the United States are encouraged to submit their observations, even if they aren’t from the Chicago region.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: squirrels, ecology
• Location: at home or close to home
• Duration: a few minutes, whenever you can
• Cost: free or low cost
• Gear: no equipment needed
• Level of Difficulty: Easy