Citizen Science Projects

National Phenology Network

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The National Phenology Network is a group of government, educational, and scientific organizations that’s, in their words, “designed and organized to engage federal agencies, environmental networks and field stations, educational institutions, and mass participation by citizen scientists.”

Phenology is the incredibly important study of ecologocal events and their timing; in the long term, it can provide important insight to changes in local ecology AND global climate change.

National Phenology Network provides a protocol and data entry portal for citizen scientists to report their observations (and it collects hard data, going further than Project Budburst, an affiliated educational outreach project). It’s great to see a real citizen science project being organized in this area; I hope they’ll continue to work in cooperation with other groups to provide ways of combining botanical data with data from projects like the Citizen Weather Observer Program and eBird.

And for those of you looking for a career in citizen science, check out the job announcement on the National Phenology Network site for a Wildlife Phenology Program Coordinator — there’s a link in the top left-hand corner of their web site — good luck!