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

A citizen science alert from Georgette.

If you’re near Durham, NC this weekend (July 19), join the Plant Stalkers training session and help track and monitor invasive species of plants near the Eno River.  Invasive plants range from those that do not provide adequate shelter or food for local animals to those that actually harm native plants. Watch the Plant Stalkers in action then join in on the hunt! Look for Japanese Stiltgrass, Privet trees, English Ivy, Chinese Lespedeza and other invasive species and then mark the location with a GPS device. They’ll provide instruction in finding the plants, using GPS and submitting your data through Google Earth…and even certify you to contribute to the project on your own!

Project Snapshot:

Topics: citizen science, plants, nature

Location: involves a trip

Duration: several hours

Cost: free or low cost

Gear: GPS device (you can also borrow one of theirs), computer

Level of Difficulty: easy

The Boston Museum of Science is sponsoring Firefly Day this Saturday at 9:00 am to kick off another summer of Firefly Watch, a citizen science project dedicated to tracking the appearance of fireflies throughout the summer months.  Throughout the day, visitors to the museum can learn more about fireflies, meet the team of scientists sponsoring this citizen science opportunity, and watch their kids march in the Firefly Parade!

Spotting fireflies on warm summer nights mesmerizes all of us each year, but the population of fireflies seems to be dwindling with each summer.  Firefly Watch is a citizen science project that hopes to understand where fireflies live and thrive.  This information can be used to create habitats to promote firefly survival.  To learn more about fireflies, get started by checking out the wealth of information found on the museum’s webpage or this post by Backyard Nature.  This is a great project for families to do together after a summer BBQ or before bedtime.

Even if you can’t make the event this Saturday in Boston, participating is really easy.  After signing up and describing your habitat (backyard or local park) online, simply go outside once a week for 10 minutes and record observations about any fireflies that you see (or don’t see).  There were not many participants signed up in the West Coast last year (see map), so I encourage all of my neighbors on the other side of the United States to make this a national effort this summer by signing up today.

Thanks to Jamie Harmon for the use of his wonderful photo.  You can check out his photography here.

Statistics from previous years:  In 2008, there were 526 habitats that reported firefly sightings, as opposed to 147 that did not.  (797 habitats that signed up did not collect data – I hope this improves this year!)

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

• Topics: fireflies, extinction
• Location: at home or close to home
• Duration: 10 minutes once per week
• Cost: free or low cost
• Gear: no equipment needed
• Level of Difficulty: Easy

Philadelphia will join 2,848 cities in 84 countries on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. for Earth Hour 2009.  The World Wildlife Fund, a global conservation group, is asking governments, businesses, and individuals around the world to demonstrate their commitment to finding solutions to global warming by turning off their lights for one hour.  Landmarks around the world from New York City’s Empire State Building to the Sphinx and Great Pyramids in Egypt will go dark to call attention to climate change.  Participating is as easy as citizen science projects get – just turn off your light switches for one hour! (If you’re thinking of switching to candles to save carbons, this report suggests otherwise.)

The goal of the World Wildlife Fund is to have one billion people worldwide vote for energy conservation by turning off their lights.  These votes will be presented to world leaders convening at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

I plan to spend my vote eating a delicious dinner cooked by my fiance…by candlelight!  Families with kids could read a ghost story by flashlight or make shadow puppets!  Be creative, and feel free to post your Earth Hour activities in the comments section of this post.

Statistics from previous years: In 2007, more than two million homes and businesses participated in Sydney, Australia. By 2008, that number increased to 50 million homes and businesses around the globe.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

> Topics: conservation of energy, climate change, global warming

> Location: your home

> Duration: 1 hour

> Cost: Free, not to mention seeing a small decrease your electric bill!

> Gear: A light switch

> Level of Difficulty: REALLY easy

Though it is not something that we think about every day, pollination is an important part of our ecosystem.  Everything from the prescription drugs we take to the food we eat for lunch comes from natural plant products that are pollinated in the wild.  Economists and ecologists working together to assess the financial value of natural ecosystems estimate that pollination of plants in the wild by bees in the United States is worth four to six billion dollars per year!  BILLIONS…and we get it all for free…

…for now, anyway.  Scientists are already aware that populations of bees are dwindling in wild and agricultural landscapes.  Even worse, because natural habitats are uncommon in city dwellings, they may not provide enough resources to support viable communities of pollinators.  Tracking where pollinators thrive can help scientists determine how habitats can be changed to promote bee colonization.

Launched in 2008 by Dr. Gretchen LeBuhn at San Francisco State University, The Great Sunflower Project aims to do just that.  Participants can sign up online to receive Lemon Queen sunflower seeds through the mail, and plant them in their own garden.  Two weekends a month, participants would be required to sit outside in the sunshine and record the number of bees visiting their flowers during 30 minutes.  (Not a bad gig, and a great excuse to enjoy the spring weather.)

Start your garden today!  Seeds (along with a handy welcome kit) will be sent out during the month of March and through the beginning of April.

(Photo, “Carpenter Bee on Sunflower,” was used here with permission by Ginny Stibolt.)

Statistics from 2008: 40,000 sunflowers planted and observed across the United States

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

> Topics Sunflowers, bees, spring, pollination

> Location Close to home

> Duration 30 minutes, two weekends a month

> Cost Free

> Gear No special equipment required – they will mail you seeds!

> Level of Difficulty Easy

Flower shows around the country are a pleasant reminder that spring is just around the corner!  One of my favorite things about spring is the blooming of the beautiful plants and flowers as the weather begins to warm.  (Even if my seasonal allergies beg to differ.)

This year, instead of just passing by blooming plants on our commute to work, we can take a moment to record our observations and send them to Project Budburst.  Founded in 2007, Project Budburst is a national citizen science campaign designed to collect data about the phenophases (stages of a plant’s life cycle, such as first leaf, first flower, etc.) of trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses in our areas.  By collecting this data each year, Project Budburst will be able to determine how variations in our climate affects plant growth in regions around the country.  This project is funded by a variety of sponsors, including the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Chicago Botanical Garden, and the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana.

Phenology is a visible way of demonstrating the effects of climate change directly to young students,  and many elementary science classrooms around the country are participating in this year’s data collection.  I will be keeping tabs on the phenological observations of my mother’s fifth grade science students in the weeks to come.  When asked why she chose this particular science project for her students to become involved in, my mother replied, “I find my students are more interested in science that they do themselves; getting them out of the textbook is the easiest way to hold their interest.  I think with this particular project, they can involve their parents and siblings in getting excited about the arrival of spring without a big time commitment.  I also liked that once their data was submitted, my students could go back to the website to see their local results for Butler, PA posted on a map of the entire United States.  Seeing that their simple observations of the world around them impacted such a large study is a great reinforcement of what they accomplished as citizen scientists.”

Getting involved is very easy, and requires a minimal amount of effort each day as you observe the plants in your neighborhood…maybe even in your backyard!  To get started, download the starter packet here.

Statistics from 2007 (pilot year): 913 phenological events reported from participants in 26 states; Ohio and Illinois had the highest rate of participation; 2008 data collected all year round, but still being analyzed

PROJECT SNAPSHOT:

> Topics Plants, climate control, phenophases, spring

> Location Close to home

> Duration As little as 10 minutes each day

> Cost Free

> Gear No special equipment required

> Level of Difficulty Easy

GLOBE at Night wants you to  participate in a global campaign to observe and record visible stars to help researchers measure light pollution.  ”2008 marked a monumental shift in human history when the number of people living in cities exceeded half the people on Earth. Because of the ambient light of urban landscapes, many city dwellers have never seen a sky full of stars.” (Including this urbanite!) 2008′s program inspired 6,838 measurements of night-sky brightness by citizen scientists around the world. 

“While we have just begun to analyze the data, we have strong anecdotal evidence from our citizen-scientist network in North America that they experienced abnormally cloudy skies this year,” says Connie Walker, GLOBE at Night project manager at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, AZ.

GLOBE at Night takes approximately 15-30 minutes. Do it as a family or get a bunch of friends together and do some real star-gazing! Start by finding Orion an hour after sunset between March 16-28th and follow the four, simple steps described on Globe’s site.

 Orion, the Great Hunter, looks like this (left).  ”Look for three bright stars close together in an almost-straight line. These three stars represent Orion’s belt. The two bright stars to the north are his shoulders and the two to the south are his feet.”

 No prior experience is necessary and all the information you need to participate is on the site including activity kits for families, teachers and students.  All observations will be available online via Google Earth.

On a related note, Science Cheerleader subscriber Phil Hoffman sent in this news tip: The Galileoscope is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators. No matter where you live, with this easy-to-assemble refractor, citizen scientists can see the celestial wonders that Galileo first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today, including lunar craters, the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, and Saturn’s rings!

Globe at Night 

Project Snapshot

> Topics  Astronomy & Space, Climate & Weather, Ecology & Environment, Nature & Outdoor

> Location Close to home, Outdoors

> Duration  15-30 minutes

> Cost  Free

> Gear  Just a computer to log in your observations

> Level of Difficulty Easy

Hey, Citizen Scientists! Here’s another terrific activity for our  Project Finder. BioBlitz is a 24-hour event in which teams of scientists, volunteers, and community members join forces to find, identify, and learn about as many local plant and animal species as possible. National Geographic is “helping conduct a BioBlitz in a different park each year throughout the decade leading up to the U.S. National Park Service centennial in 2016.” The next annual National Geographic-National Park Service BioBlitz takes place at the Indiana Dunes BioBlitz, a 24-hour event from May 15 to May 16, noon to noon. The goals of the BioBlitz are “to record as many living organisms in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 24 hours, to increase awareness of the diverse species in this urban setting and to better understand how to protect the natural environment in the future. Chicago Wilderness and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources are collaborating in the race to discover and document the 15,000-acre park.”      

“Explorers” of all ages are needed.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT

 Topics: Animals, Birds, Ecology, Environment, Nature

 Location: Chicago, Outdoors

Level of Difficulty: Easy

Fee: No Costs

Gear: No special equipment required

Duration: 24 hours

Suitable for people of all ages!

 Nolan from Colorado State University wants you to know about CoCoRaHS, a fun and simple citizen science activity for the weather enthusiast. Volunteers send in backyard rain, hail and snow observations to scientists who measure and track the data. The National Weather Service, other meteorologists, hydrologists, emergency managers, city utilities (water supply, water conservation, storm water), insurance adjusters, USDA, engineers, mosquito control, ranchers and farmers, outdoor & recreation interests, teachers, students, and neighbors in the community use the data.

Nolan tells me that by “late 2009, CoCoRaHS will be in the single largest source for U.S.  daily precipitation data, thanks to the power of volunteers.” 

PROJECT SNAPSHOT

Topics: Weather

Location: Close to home; Outdoors.

Level of Difficulty: More complicated than I expected but once you’ve purchased (and assembled) the equipment and had a chat with the regional coordinator, the easy (and fun) parts begin.

Fee: Costs about $25 to buy the necessary equipment. (The organizers do all they can to ensure accurate data collection and proper equipment plays a big role there.)

Gear: Special measurer (see above). Computer.

Duration: Once you have the equipment, it’ll take about an hour to build it out. Then, just wait for some rain, hail or snow! Record precipitations 7am, daily for as long as you’d like to participate.

I’m heading to Phoenix for a few days to meet with the Science Debate organizers. I won’t be there long enough to catch the big Eagles-Cardinals football show down on Sunday. If mascots have any influence on the outcome, the Cardinals are going down (says the Philly chick and former 76ers cheerleader). Check out these quirky science facts about the two birds:

Cardinal: The male cardinal is the defender of their breeding territory. In fact, it can spend long hours fighting his reflection he sees in glass surfaces.  (Note to Coach Reid: there’s got to be a way to weave this into an offensive plan.)

Eagle:The Bald Eagle, the living symbol of the U.S.A.’s freedoms, spirit and pursuit of excellence, is a strong bird that can live up to 28 years in the wild. Mating: during the Cartwheel Display a pair flies to great heights and then locks feet together as they go do “cartwheels” plummeting down towards the ground. They only break apart at the very last moment. (Here’s hoping the Eagles don’t break apart at the last moment on Sunday.)

All this talk about birds reminds me. Now’s the perfect time to participate in the 10- Minute Urban Bird Watch, a citizen science activity sponsored by Cornell University. “You become a citizen-scientist by observing birds in your neighborhood and sending the data to scientists at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology.” And, you’ll learn how to protect birds from urban threats.

PROJECT SNAPSHOT

Topics: Ornithology, Gardening

Location: Close to home; Outdoors.

Level of Difficulty: Very easy.

Fee: No fee. Free registration, kit and bonus sunflower seeds!

Gear: Pencil, paper, access to computer.

Duration: A little as 10 minutes, as often as you’d like.

Suitable for students as well. Website offers links to additional ornithology citizen science projects.