What do you do when a new industry or development comes to your community with the potential to shake-up natural resources? When the shale and natural gas boom came to Pennsylvania in 2010, many communities throughout the state were confronted with that very question. Large developments sprung up in areas historically spared from energy development,
Scientific publication is an important milestone for many citizen science projects, that can sometimes feel elusive. But, with a little front-end planning and guidance, it can be done. A paper by the American Trout Lily Project, hosted on CitSci.org, was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Ecology! Their paper and their process for becoming published provides an
Calling all project managers – we need your training materials! Do you ever wonder how your training materials and approaches influence data quality? You work hard to develop training materials and offer in-person trainings for your volunteers, yet the scholarly literature suggests that, despite your best efforts, land managers and scientists may still question the
A BioBlitz is a rapid species inventory that generally occurs over a 24 hour period with scientists and citizen scientists counting as many species as they can over this time in a given place. The goal of BioBlitz programs is to get the public excited about the science opportunities within their own backyard while at
Celebrating Citizen Scientists Spring is finally here and with it comes Citizen Science Day on April 14th! Join us in celebrating the amazing work of citizen scientists like yourselves from around the world! In this second installment of our Volunteer Spotlight series, you’ll meet a few more of the people behind the projects and hear
Spring is finally here and with it comes Citizen Science Day on April 14th! Join us in celebrating the amazing work of volunteers like yourselves from around the world! Special Volunteers At CitSci.org, we are inspired by the work volunteers do for their projects! We’d like to take this opportunity to share some inspirational stories
What is Stream Tracker? As spotlighted in our March Newsletter, Stream Tracker is a citizen science project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Citizen Science for Earth Systems Program. It is run out of the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability (ESS) at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Stream Tracker studies intermittent streams – i.e., streams
By: Dr. Stacy Lynn, Natural Resource Ecology Lab, Colorado State University *Special thanks to Dr. Paul Strode and Dr. Cecilia Hennessy for encouraging us to update and improve this piece. Developing a hypothesis is a natural step in scientific inquiry, generally follows the development of a research question and functions as a tentative answer to
Written by: Ellen Eisenbeis and Stacy Lynn Why is My Research Question Important? Setting your project up for success involves developing a research question that is clear, concise and achievable. This can be challenging, but is an essential step to creating a quality study. According to Jane Agee’s work on developing qualitative research questions, poorly
Hundreds of projects all over the world use the CitSci.org platform to build and grow their citizen science projects. Citizen science is the process of engaging the public in science research. Citizen science projects most commonly form around scientific questions that cannot be answered by scientists alone. In our Project Spotlight series, you’ll meet the
CitSci.org Blog 