For me, part of a sustainable lifestyle is being an engaged citizen and reconnecting to the natural world. I also don’t think nature and technology have to be at odds with each other!
For easy reference here’s a list of citizen science opportunities! I’ll update the list as I learn about more!
Birding
Birding is a really fun way to start paying more attention to nature. It’s easy to find second hand birding books, and free apps like the Merlin app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and ShopGoodwill.com usually has tons of inexpensive binoculars for sale that can help you get started without a huge investment.
Hummingbirds at Home
Log your hummingbird sightings to help the Audubon Society track behavior.
eBird
This is another Cornell Lab app. Record your bird sightings, and find local hotspots! See what birds you can expect to see in your area.
Plants
TreeSnap
“Tag trees you find in your community, on your property, or out in the wild using TreeSnap! Scientists will use the data you collect to locate trees for research projects like studying the genetic diversity of tree species and building better tree breeding programs.”
The American Chestnut Foundation
TACF is working to restore native chestnuts that have been wiped out by blight. Learn more about the troubles faced by American Chestnut trees and how you can submit a tree for inclusion in their wild tree inventory.
Fossil Atmospheres Leaf Study
Through the end of August 2019. Help researchers with the Smithsonian study climate change with ginkgo trees. Learn more about the project here.
Geography
Sea Level Rise/Catch the King
Catch the King is a grassroots movement that started in Hampton Roads, Virginia, a coastal region facing heavy impacts from sea level rise and land subsidence. They developed an app where citizen scientists can drop location pins to mark the highest point of the king tide, the highest high tide of the year, and after other high water events, such as heavy rainstorms. The idea has caught on and people all over the world can join in.
History
By the People
“The Library of Congress launched By the People (crowd.loc.gov) in the autumn of 2018. The application invites you to transcribe, review, and tag digitized images of manuscripts and typed materials from the Library’s collections. Everyone is welcome to take part! You don’t even need to create an account, but if you do you’ll have access to additional features such as tagging, and reviewing other people’s transcriptions. All transcriptions are made and reviewed by volunteers before they are returned to loc.gov, the Library’s website. These transcriptions will improve search, readability, and access to handwritten and typed documents for those who are not fully sighted or cannot read the handwriting of the original documents.” – https://crowd.loc.gov/about/
Deep Time Walk
“Get outdoors to participate in a 4.6km Deep Time Walk anywhere in the world. As you walk at a rate of 1 million years per metre, you journey across Earth’s 4.6bn geological timeline, with the app silently calculating your speed and distance adjusting the soundscape accordingly. This enables you to focus on listening to an extraordinary story of Earth history without distraction. As you walk through time, a dramatised narrative provides different perspectives on how Earth formed.” – https://www.deeptimewalk.org/kit/app/
Exercise and learn at the same time! I haven’t tried this app yet but it looks incredibly interesting!
2 Comments
Dirk Enzmann
As a non-twitter, non-facebook and a non-other-social-media user I can’t find another way to send this note to Handy Finch, thus I use the opportunity here:
I am deeply impressed by your “Comprehensive History of Deck the Hall” , especially by the careful debunking of the claim that Mozart did use the tune. As a “thank you” I am including a link to our (Hamburg Choir “Schall & Hauch” – Germany) most recent Covid-Christmas-Carol (Covid because we recorded it per person and pasted it together to create a chorus version) of “Deck the Halls” (plural): https://nx14792.your-storageshare.de/s/edaLEQz9dPYLyQ9 . The arrangement is from a Swedish song book (Julkörprisma för blandad kör och diskantkör, p. 24-25, Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm, author of arrangement unknown).
handyfinch
Hi! Thanks so much for taking the time to leave your comment here! I didn’t realize it, but I had flipped a setting that disabled comments on my other posts after 28 days. That’s fixed now, and I’ve also added a “contact me” form, so hopefully no one has the same problem in the future.
The Hamburg Choir’s “Deck the Halls” sounds amazing! I appreciate you sharing that with me! I’m so impressed that you all were able to piece it all together and make it happen despite Covid. I have been amazed at how the musical community has been able to adapt over the past year. Despite the obstacles, musicians all over the world have proved that nothing can stop music.