Enriching Your Travels with Citizen Science

If you're feeling tired of watching Netflix and reading the news you should consider becoming a citizen scientist. Outdoor activities enrich the experience of RVers everywhere. And while being out in nature is a worthwhile experience on its own, it’s easier than ever to contribute to science.  Citizen science is the practice of public participation and collaboration in scientific research to increase scientific knowledge. Through citizen science, people can share and contribute data monitoring and collection programs. It is entirely voluntary and can look different from person to person or project to project. It might look like taking a photo of a backyard tree to document the change in seasons, collecting a water sample and sending it off to a lab, or looking at photos of outer space on your phone and looking for pattern formations of stars. The motivation for participating individuals is incredibly diverse: wanting to contribute to research, solving a problem in their community, enriching their children’s education by learning something new, or just as a hobby here and there with an app on their phone. A willingness to learn is all you really need to get started.

Resources to get Started with Citizen Science 

• SciStarter – A platform to search for citizen science programs near you or that you can do from home. You can search for projects by keyword or topic.
• Zooniverse- A collection of citizen science projects you can participate in form your own computer.
• Citizen Science- For joining working groups and association teams and more resources. 
• Tutorials for inaturalist- How to geotag and upload observations. 

Project Ideas

• Observe wildlife anywhere. Use the inaturalist app to upload observations and add them to a global database. Photograph plants, animals and other organisms. The app is a take on the classic guidebook travelers carry with them combined with technology.
• Search Space: Help NASA by volunteering for stardust@home and searching images for tiny interstellar dust impacts. 
• Count Birds: Participate in the Great backyard and Bird Count. An annual event that gets bird watchers to count birds across the continent and then tallies the highest number of birds of each species seen together at one time.
• Take Mountain Top Photographs: Be a visibility volunteer for the Appalachian Mountain Club.  If you live or hike in States from Maine to Virginia you can take photos from a mountain view that will help scientists study air quality. 
• Listen for Frog and Toad Valls. Listen for the calls of frogs and toads for 20 minutes a week and record and share your data with Frogwatch USA.
• Learn About Local Plants. Join the National Phenology Networks plant monitoring program and learn about plant species in your area.
• Survey Monarch Populations. Help the monarch larva monitoring program collect long term data on larval monarch populations and milkweed by volunteering to conduct surveys in your local area.
• Art History: Two Dutch art museums need volunteers to start fishing in the past and analyzing paintings from 1500 to 1700. Each painting features a fish, biologists and art historians need help identifying the fish.
• Identify Plants on Your Next Walk. Use the Leafsnap app (an electronic field guide developed by Colombia university, the university of Maryland, and the Smithsonian intuition). It can be used to identify plants with visual recognition software and scientists can learn about the ebb and flow of flora from geotagged images taken by app users.
• Marine life observations: If you’re interested in marine life Beluga Bits is a research project documenting the sex, age, and pod size of Beluga whales visiting the church hill river in Canada. Volunteers can be trained to differentiate and identify individual whales.

By embracing citizen science, RVers can add value to their next adventure and become a part of a virtual community of outdoor enthusiasts. We hope these lists of resources and project ideas will inspire you to observe your environment more closely on your travels or even just enjoy spending more time outdoors. Join us on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter for more education and inspiration.