Citizen Science Books to Help You Make a Difference

Citizen science is an exciting topic in this day-and-age. People other than trained scientists can contribute to science and nature conservation and help to make a difference! Here are some excellent books that will guide you in your efforts along these lines. 

Citizen Science: Public Participation in Environmental Research
From Brand: Comstock Publishing Associates

Description

Citizen science enlists members of the public to make and record useful observations, such as counting birds in their backyards, watching for the first budding leaf in spring, or measuring local snowfall. The large numbers of volunteers who participate in projects such as Project FeederWatch or Project BudBurst collect valuable research data, which, when pooled together, create an enormous body of scientific data on a vast geographic scale. In return, such projects aim to increase participants' connections to science, place, and nature, while supporting science literacy and environmental stewardship. In Citizen Science, experts from a variety of disciplines—including scientists and education specialists working at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where many large citizen science programs use birds as proxies for biodiversity—share their experiences of creating and implementing successful citizen science projects, primarily those that use massive data sets gathered by citizen scientists to better understand the impact of environmental change.

Customer Review

5 stars

covers the basics very well 

By ephemeral

Citizen Science: Public Participation in Environmental Research is a collection of articles put together by the folks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is one of the hotbeds of citizen science activity in the US. As the title indicates, the book focuses on environmental (primarily biological) citizen science projects, but many of the key concepts are still relevant to people using citizen science in other fields. About half of the authors are from Cornell, so there is a definite species bias, but there are examples from plant and insect projects as well.

The book is divided into three parts:
-The Practice of Citizen Science describes the basics of what citizen science is and how it works, as well as providing some nice examples of how successful projects are run.
-Impacts of Citizen Science on Conservation Research discusses the role and potential roles for citizen science projects in legitimate conservation work.
-Educational, Social, and Behavioral Aspects of Citizen Science covers the benefits of citizen science outside of the traditional goal of collecting more data for large scale projects.

All told, this is a well written and extremely well edited book. The topic is very narrow, but I think anyone interested in citizen science (educators, scientists, volunteers) would benefit from reading it.

The Incidental Steward: Reflections on Citizen Science
By Akiko Busch

Description

A search for a radio-tagged Indiana bat roosting in the woods behind her house in New York's Hudson Valley led Akiko Busch to assorted other encounters with the natural world - local ecological monitoring projects, community-organized cleanup efforts, and data-driven citizen science research. Whether pulling up water chestnuts in the Hudson River, measuring beds of submerged aquatic vegetation, or searching out vernal pools, all illuminated the role of ordinary citizens as stewards of place. In this elegantly written book, Busch highlights factors that distinguish twenty-first-century citizen scientists from traditional amateur naturalists: a greater sense of urgency, helpful new technologies, and the expanded possibilities of crowdsourcing. The observations here look both to precisely recorded data sheets and to the impressionistic marginalia, scribbled asides, and byways that often attend such unpredictable outings. While not a primer on the prescribed protocols of citizen science, the book combines vivid natural history, a deep sense of place, and reflection about our changing world. Musing on the expanding potential of citizen science, the author celebrates today's renewed volunteerism and the opportunities it offers for regaining a deep sense of connection to place.

Editorial Review

"'Sensuously lush and thought-provoking chronicles... This is a beautiful and incisive affirmation of how "full engagement with the natural world enriches the human experience".' (Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review)"

Customer Review

5 stars

A wonderful place to start

By Ann Klefstad

Akiko Busch has written a deeply researched and personally experienced account of what ordinary people can do to advance both scientific knowledge of the natural world and its preservation. In vivid, spare writing she accounts for the both the difficulties of perception in a realm that is new to one and the rewards of training that perception. Her appendix listing various citizen science initiatives is invaluable, and the bibliography is also of great use. A wonderful book.

Be the Change: Saving the World with Citizen Science
By Chandra Clarke

Description

Can You Save The World?

It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by everything that is wrong in the world. In 2010, there were 660,000 deaths from malaria. Dire predictions about climate change suggest that sea levels could rise enough to submerge both Los Angeles and London by 2100. Bees are dying, not by the thousands but by the millions. 

But what can you do? You’re just one person, right? The good news is that you *can* do something. 

It’s called citizen science, and it’s a way for ordinary people like you and me to do real, honest-to-goodness, help-answer-the-big-questions science. 

This book introduces you to a world in which it is possible to go on a wildlife survey in a national park, install software on your computer to search for a cure for cancer, have your smartphone log the sound pollution in your city, transcribe ancient Greek scrolls, or sift through the dirt from a site where a mastodon died 11,000 years ago—even if you never finished high school. 

Part I of Be the Change: Saving the World with Citizen Science will show you what citizen science is, how important it is, and why we need more of it. You will also find out how it can personally benefit you, how you can get involved, and what it might mean to you if you did. 

Part II provides a large list of projects that you can join right now, concisely explained, and organized by the level of involvement required. 

Citizen science is fun, it's easy, and you can get started today. Be the Change: Saving the World with Citizen Science will show you how.

Customer Review

5 stars

Ways that the average citizen can help advance scientific research and change the world

By Charles Ashbacher

There have been many dramatic changes in society as a consequence of the development and continued function of the internet and World Wide Web in combination with the widespread use of computers. One that could be the most significant is the ability for ordinary citizens to become involved in scientific projects. Over the years I have been heavily involved in two distributed computing projects, the SETI@Home and the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. In both of these projects, the contributor downloads the software to their computer and then downloads specific work files. The computer will then examine the data on background and then report the results and acquire a new work file when the processing is complete.
There are many projects that the citizen can work on and not all of them require the heavy use of processing. A list of the current projects along with statements of philosophy is available on the Citizen Science Center website. This book briefly touches on these points and gives the ways in which a citizen can contribute, from donating to fund organizations and research, to having your computer process data files to using your eyes to examine images to gathering data in the field and serving as a test subject. A large number of projects are available for participation and it is a way for the average person to be a part of something that could have significant positive consequences for the world.

I strongly recommend this book and the Citizen Science Center website for people that want to help the advancement of science but don't feel that they have the skills to do so. As can be seen from these two resources, if you can connect to the web, you can contribute. With so many projects available, you will find something that you are interested in.

I certainly hope that this gets you on the road to contribution in this wonderful and rewarding arena. If you participate in a project, feel free to come back and leave a comment so others can hear about your rewarding experience!

Here is a citizen science article for birders:

Citizen Scientist - Reporting Leg Flags

Book Review - Nature's Fortune by Mark Tercek

Nature's Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature

By Mark R. Tercek, Jonathan S. Adams

In the introduction to Nature's Fortune, author Mark Tercek cites the book which started him on his path to becoming first an environmentalist at Goldman Sachs, then in 2008, the CEO of The Nature Conservancy and ultimately led to the publishing of this book:

"I read The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable, the 2002 book by Stanford University's Gretchen Daily, a professor of environmental science. The book explained the workings of ecosystems and how they delivered goods and services to people. This scientific explanation of nature delivering value began to build my appreciation for nature and prompted me to reflect on opportunities and price tags"

A few pages on, he describes how the two perspectives - environmentalism and business - can mesh to protect nature:

"Environmentalists generally believe in nature's inherent value. That idea is the bedrock of the environmental movement. However, environmentalists cannot persuade everyone to think along the same lines. Focusing only on the innate wonders of nature risks alienating potential supporters and limits the environmental community's ability to reach a broader audience and to mine sources of new ideas. The "Isn't nature wonderful?" argument can leave the impression that nature offers solely aesthetic benefits, or worse, that nature is a luxury only rich people or rich countries can afford. We need to get business, government , and individuals to understand nature is not only wonderful, it is also economically valuable. Indeed, nature is the fundamental underpinning of human well-being...One way [to promote nature conservation ] is to connect nature to what concerns people most - how to make lives better, protect health, create jobs, and strengthen the economy...In many places around the world people believe they have more pressing concerns than conserving nature, and those concerns will take precedence unless they better understand what nature provides."

So the concept he originally discovered in Gretchen Daily's book - "ecosystem services" - and how an intact ecosystem and its services can benefit both people and businesses is the central thesis of this book. He goes on to discuss case studies where, lo and behold, environmentalists and businesses work together to conserve nature. 

Morro Bay, California

One illustrative case study is described in the Chapter 4: "The New Fishing". This chapter focuses on the community of Morro Bay, CA and begins as follows:

"Fish are an excellent example of nature's value. The fishing industry drives coastal economies worldwide and provides the main source of protein for 1 billion people. Yet more than 80 percent of fisheries operate at or beyond sustainable limits."

This introduction is followed by the mention of Elinor Ostrom, the first and only woman  to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Ostrom won for her studies of how people who share resources such as fish, timber, or pastureland manage them for the good of all. She found that when communities band together, trust one another, and have clear property rights, they can innovate andovercome shortsighted self-interest, and instead manage forests and fisheries for future generations.

"The kind of collaboration Ostrom documented is also saving fisheries on California's Central Coast. In this region, the environmental community had been making little progress toward more sustainable fishing practices. Rather than giving up, some environmentalists joined with the fishing community to create innovative solutions that produce both profits and benefits for nature."

"Not long ago, the idea that diehard environmentalists and flinty, weathered fisherman would find common ground seemed unlikely, even absurd...But new thinking about the value of nature spawns new alliances, and in Morro Bay, California, and many other places, the tide has turned. When both sides are willing to drop old assumptions and experiment with new methods, results can be dramatic."

This chapter discusses the wrongheaded assumptions that led to overfishing around the globe, and also the specifics of the Morro Bay problems and the innovative solutions (e.g. "catch shares") . It is an interesting case study, and it amply illustrates the dropping of old assumptions and the experimenting with new methods and the dramatic results that ensued. A very, very important change in attitude is mentioned on the last page of the chapter - it mentions "a community of fisherman taking responsibility for their shared resources for the first time, rather than simply exploiting it to the fullest extent possible" What an incredibly important shift in attitude!!! And it works out in everybody's and nature's best interests!

I highly recommend this book to all people interested in both nature conservation and business not to mention people with an interest in how to make lives better, protect health, create jobs, and strengthen the economy. This book discusses what seems to me to be The Great Innovation in nature conservation and in business and represents a model for both 21st century environmentalism and business: "innovative solutions that produce both profits and benefits for nature." 

Saving the Cerulean Warbler

Inspired by the book shown below, CERULEAN BLUES, and by the memory of what a thrill it was to see this beautiful songbird for the first time, I decided to put together an article on some of the efforts (by no means comprehensive - more like a "quick peek") to save "North America's fastest declining neotropical migrant songbird" - the Cerulean Warbler. As you will see, there are people at work in both North and South America saving this vanishing songbird.

Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird

By Katie Fallon

Taking the reader from the mountains of Appalachia to a coffee plantation near Bogotá, Colombia, this investigation into the plight of the cerulean warbler—a tiny migratory songbird—describes its struggle to survive in ever-shrinking bands of suitable habitat. This elusive creature—a favorite among bird watchers and the fastest-declining warbler species in the United States—has lost three percent of its total population each year since 1966. This precipitous decline means that today there are 80 percent fewer ceruleans than 40 years ago, and their numbers continue to drop because of threats including deforestation, global warming, and mountaintop-removal coal mining. With scientific rigor and a sense of wonder, Fallon charts their path across more than 2000 miles and shows how the fate of a creature weighing less than an ounce is vitally linked to that of our own.

The Cerulean Warbler was formerly one of the most abundant breeding warblers in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, but is now one of the country’s most imperiled migrant songbirds. Overall, Cerulean Warbler numbers have plummeted by almost 70% since 1966. This elusive bird winters in the northern Andes CW Conservation Corridor breeds from the Great Lakes region to Georgia, and west from Wisconsin to Louisiana, with particular concentrations in the Appalachians and Central Hardwoods region. Both its breeding and wintering habitat are being lost. (Source: American Bird Conservancy (ABC) website)

Video: Cerulean Warbler

Efforts in the United States

Here is a video on a study being conducted in the region of the United States that has the highest population of breeding Cerulean Warblers in the world.

Video: University of Tennessee cerulean warblers study (USA)

Efforts in South America

(March 1, 2011) American Bird Conservancy and Fundación ProAves, the leading bird conservation organizations in the U.S. and Colombia respectively, have secured thirteen new conservation easements in Colombia with private landowners that will protect important habitat for the Cerulean Warbler – North America's fastest declining neotropical migrant songbird.

“The local communities have been very receptive to the conservation needs of this bird. Implementing a conservation easement is not terribly difficult once we show the local landowners how they can practice conservation and still make a living from the land,” said Heidy Valle, who runs the easement program with ProAves.

Saving this bird is going to require a concerted and continuous effort in both North and South America,” said Benjamin Skolnik, who manages ABC’s Colombian projects.

(Source: American Bird Conservancy website)

The Cerulean Warbler Conservation Corridor comprises three private reserves – Pauxi Pauxi Reserve (Helmeted Curassow), Cerulean Warbler Reserve (Gorgeted Wood-Quail) and Chicamocha Reserve (Niceforo’s Wren), all owned and operated by ABC’s Colombian partner Fundación ProAves. The reserves were established to protect not only key wintering habitat for migrant songbirds, but also the last remaining forests for species recognized by the Alliance for Zero Extinction. ABC is creating a forested corridor between these reserves on privately owned farmland through a suite of conservation tools, including land acquisition, conservation easements, and shade coffee production. Another key component is to link conservation efforts here to the important work being done in the United States.

(Source : ABC website)

Video:  Birding paradise in the Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve (South America)

Male Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica Cerulea), North America

Steve Maslowski

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Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica Cerulea) Female Bathing, Rio Grande Valley, Texas

Tom Vezo/Minden...

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Cerulean Warbler

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