6 Citizen Science Projects for Kids in 2016

May 9, 2016 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

Teaching children about the natural world
should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.

-Thomas Berry

You don’t need to be a scientist to conduct research that makes a difference. Citizen science projects allow anyone to make observations that contribute to a large body of data for scientists and researchers to analyze, without adding greatly to their research costs. It’s a great way to get kids feeling involved and empowered; enthusiastic about intellectual curiosity and the scientific method. With these six citizen science projects for kids, they’ll also learn and connect with nature and the creatures that inhabit it.

6 Citizen Science Projects for Kids

Penguin Watch

You’ve probably seen posts about Penguin Watch recently. Since penguins are top predators and spent most of their life in water, changes in their populations can be indicators of changes within their Antarctic ecosystem. Penguin Watch is a strictly online project that presents you with images of penguin nesting sites, and asks you to mark adult penguins, chicks, and eggs as well as any other animals close to nests. Afterwards, you can discuss the pictures with the science team or other volunteers. It’s like a seek and find puzzle, and they’re not always easy!

Darwin’s Dogs

How has doggie DNA changed as they evolved from wolves to man’s best friend, and how did those genetic changes affect behavior? Finding out more about how genetic change and behavioral changes are linked might help us understand neurological diseases in dogs— and people.

The Darwin’s Dogs project asks dog owners to complete a survey about their dogs and mail in a saliva sample so that researchers can connect DNA and personality traits. Results will be shared with participants and kids will really get to think through what makes their dog unique!

FrogWatch USA

Frogs and toads are both predators and prey. They’re very helpful for keeping insect populations under control, and for serenading us on summer nights with song. Frogs and toads are also sensitive to environmental changes, so being aware of fluctuations in their numbers can help us understand, anticipate, and fix problems within their habitat.

Volunteers taking part in the FrogWatch USA project learn the frog and toad calls for their area— a handy skill to have, and sure to impress at parties!— and commit to listening for them for 3 minutes multiple times during breeding season. You then report your findings online.

Whales as Individuals

When I was a kid, my dad “adopted” a whale for me, and I’d occasionally get a photo of that whale when it surfaced somewhere. His name was Patches. I suppose that he was among the four or five you could choose from not because whales are so very rare (they’re not ubiquitous but they’re not that rare), but because he was very distinctive and easily identifiable, with a huge white mark on his tail (fluke). Every fluke pattern is individual, like a fingerprint, and like a fingerprint it can be difficult and time intensive to suss out the minute differences between them.

The Whales as Individuals project lets participants help with that. You make notes on images of flukes, helping to fine-tune computer algorithms so that they can better identify whales and help researchers learn about their behavior, personalities and populations, as well as pinpoint conservation concerns.

Urban Buzz

Cicada lovers in our area are excited this year because Brood V is about to emerge and fill our summer nights with song. These bugs are sensitive to environmental changes, like temperature and creeping urbanization. You can help scientists determine how climate change and the “urban heat islands” created in cities affects cicadas by collecting a few dead specimens, filling out a data card for each one and mailing them off to the Urban Buzz team at North Carolina State University.

(With any discarded exoskeletons, you can have a cicada party! Or, hook them on your lapel as a creepy brooch.)

BioBlitz

At a BioBlitz, members of the community work with scientists and teachers to find and identify as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time, as well as get an overall count of the plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms that live there. Among other things, this helps researchers track whether species populations are declining, and whether invasive species are booming. It also helps YOU to learn about the creatures in your own backyard!

There are over 250 BioBlitz events scheduled so far for 2016; this is a noteworthy year to take part, since it’s the National Park Service’s 100th birthday. Find an event near you or plan your own.

Need more citizen science in your life?

Here are 14 more citizen science projects to try. Yay for raising kid naturalists!

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5 Ways to Support National Parks

April 20, 2016 By Robin Strong Elton 1 Comment

Happy 100th birthday National Park Service! This year the National Park Service is celebrating a century as the caretaker of the national parks, and welcoming the next generation of visitors and supporters to play an active role in stewardship of America’s most treasured places. Community members are invited to join the Find Your Park movement by taking a hands-on role in park conservation and preservation. There are a lot of great ways to get involved, with activities suited to a range of interests.

5 ways to get involved with National Parks:

1. Join the VIPs.

The National Park Service’s Volunteers In Parks (VIP) program engages over 444,000 citizens who donate over 7.9 million hours, which is the equivalent to more than 3,700 additional employees. Thousands of Volunteers help maintain trails, provide visitor services, lead guided nature walks and historic tours, support preservation initiatives, and deliver education programs to youth and school groups. With more than 400 parks in all 50 U.S. states, the engagement opportunities available are as diverse as the parks themselves.

2. Become a Citizen Scientist

Ever dream of discovering a new species? Here is your chance! The parks’ Biodiversity Discovery program has revealed amazing things, and is not just scientists who make these discoveries. Volunteers and students have collected plants and animals that turn out to be rare, new to a park, and sometimes new to science. In 2016, you can join one of more than a 100 National Geographic Society BioBlitz events to help park staff and scientists catalog biodiversity in your local national park. The National Park Service reports that to date, more than 114 national parks and 30,000 people have engaged in this annual BioDiscovery effort, and more than 18,000 species new to parks have been identified.

3. Leave No Trace

Volunteers help maintain 18,000 miles of trails in national parks. If you’re planning to get out and find your park this year, help keep the parks as beautiful and litter free. Go the extra mile by bringing your own garbage bag to pick up any trash you might see along the way! And remember, there are at least 247 species of threatened or endangered plants and animals found in national parks, and you can help protect them by keeping food stores secure and not disturbing the plants, animals and historic artifacts that live there.

4. Be an Artist in Residence

Artists have created art in national parks since the late 19th century. Today, the sights and sounds in national parks continue to inspire artists in more than 50 residency programs across the country. There are programs for visual artists, writers, musicians, and other creative media. Programs vary, but residencies are typically 2 to 4 weeks in length and most include lodging. Often artists are invited to participate in park programs by sharing their art with the public.

5. Try Virtual Volunteering

In the new, free mobile iOS game – Save the Park – you can virtually experience the types of activities and impacts volunteers have in parks. Play all four volunteer characters – Environment Champion, Wildlife Lover, Citizen Scientist and Culture Concierge – across three park environments. And for each download of Save the Park occurring this year, American Express will donate $1 (up to $50,000) to support the National Park Foundation’s conservation and stewardship programs.

This post was contributed through American Express; I was not compensated in any way, just thought it was pretty cool and wanted to share for National Park Week!

Photo credit: Depositphoto

Help Save the Sea Turtles

March 29, 2016 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them
with large eyes full of tears, but said nothing.

‘This here young lady,’ said the Gryphon,
‘she wants for to know your history, she do.’

‘I’ll tell it her,’ said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone:
‘sit down, both of you,
and don’t speak a word till I’ve finished.’

-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

There are seven species of sea turtles and six of them are classified as threatened or endangered thanks to the consequences of human activity: poaching, pollution, plastics in the ocean, compromised habitat. The smallest of these, Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, are critically endangered, mostly due to “bycatch”— being ensnared in nets intended for fish or other seafood. As many as 50,000 sea turtles are being killed every year in the South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, with Kemp’s Ridleys constituting 82 percent of those killed.

While all sea turtles are, importantly, adorable, they are also an essential part of ocean ecosystems. Their grazing helps maintain healthy seagrass beds and coral reefs, they providing habitat for other marine life, they are a key player in marine food webs and they move nutrients from water to land.

Ocean conservation non-profit Oceana is petitioning to require all shrimp trawlers in the southeast shrimp trawl fishery to use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), specialized metal grates inserted in trawl nets that allow captured sea turtles to escape.

You can help.

Write to President Obama and Secretary Penny Pritzker and let them know that sea turtles warrant protection. Have your kids draw pictures (or color in this one). Oceana and One More Generation will collect the letters and present them on World Sea Turtle Day, June 16th.

The deadline to contribute your letters and add your voice is May 23, 2016. You can mail to either of these addresses, or scan and email:

Oceana
Attn: Save Sea Turtles
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20036
lsnyder@oceana.org

One More Generation
Attn: Save Sea Turtles
P.O. Box 143627
Fayetteville GA 30214
info@onemoregeneration.org

Or, you can simply sign this online petition.

You can also help the sea turtles by:

seeking out shrimp that’s locally farmed— a lot is imported from countries like Thailand, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam where shrimp farming is not as regulated.
helping to keep beaches clean, especially nesting grounds.
working to reduce artificial lighting at nesting grounds. These can discourage females from nesting, and confuse the newly hatched from making their way successfully out to sea.
educating others about the endangered status of sea turtles. You cannot love a thing you do not know.
sharing this and other PSAs that make caring contagious, encouraging others to help.

(This PSA was shot at the Rancho Nuevo Sea Turtle Sanctuary in Tamaulipas, Mexico, during a mass hatching in June 2015. Rancho Nuevo is the nesting site for 95 percent of the world’s Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, arriving en masse in the spring and early summer; about 97,000 Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles hatcheed from more than 2,000 nest. It is, as you can see, pretty fricking amazing.)

Learn more about Oceana, the importance of sea turtles and how TEDs work at http://usa.oceana.org/turtles.