Explore Nature from Home with Citizen Science Projects!
For immediate release ‐ April 03, 2020
Contact: Jessica Wackes, 919.707.9850. Images available upon request
Many of us have spent a lot more time at home than usual lately, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop learning, enjoying nature, or contributing to science! To get outside for some fresh air and nature (with an appropriate social distance, of course!), we are launching a new series of videos and live discussions that will introduce you to a variety of citizen science projects that can be done from your own home. Our goal is to introduce a project each Monday, have you try it at your own home, then get back together online on Fridays to share your findings and ask questions.
To help you get started, check out this video about the Nature’s Notebook project! Nature’s Notebook is a phenology, or definition, project that focuses on how weather and climate influence the timing of seasonal changes in plant and animal species. It’s a popular project with thousands of citizen scientists (like you!) contributing data used by many scientists worldwide, and it’s easy to do from home.
How to Participate:
All you need to do is:
- Go to naturesnotebook.org or download the Nature’s Notebook smartphone app and create an account.
- Once you are logged in, create a site for the place(s) where you intend to make your observations and choose the species you would like to observe for each location. While you do have to choose species from the list, there are almost 1400 species to choose from currently, and many are species commonly found even in very urban areas.
- After you have your site and species set, you can start collecting data! The video above walks you through how to enter your data through the app and we have a few additional resources on our website to help you make your observations.
The Museum has contributed data to Nature’s Notebook nearly weekly since 2014 along the Tree Trail at our outdoor facility, Prairie Ridge Ecostation. The Tree Tail consists of eight species of native trees that are common across North Carolina and the trail is monitored by staff, field trip groups, and volunteers for leaves, flowers, and fruits. Because we have collected data on the same individual trees so many times, we can see some interesting trends in our data and make comparisons between our trees and others across their ranges.
For example, the Eastern Redbud on our Tree Trail consistently has a few flowers bloom in the fall. The Nature’s Notebook visualization tool allows you to graph the timing of different observations, and this graph shows when our Redbud has had open flowers from 2015-2018:
The graph shows that most open flowers are observed late February-late April, but there’s that little spike between September and November most years. Do other Redbuds show the same pattern, or is our tree strange? Compare the graph above of the Prairie Ridge tree to all the Redbuds reported to Nature’s Notebook during the same years:
Comparing the two, we can see that both our tree’s peak bloom time and the smaller bloom in the fall are in line with the data for the species. That little fall bloom is actually pretty normal!
Nature’s Notebook has been collecting data for over a decade now, which means it has amassed a huge amount of information and can make some powerful statements. For example, they track the yearly arrival of spring and have noted that spring is early by as many as 3-4 weeks this year – the earliest ever on record in some areas:
Most of North Carolina shows spring’s arrival about 2 weeks early, which is in line with what we have seen along our Tree Trail at Prairie Ridge so far this year.
You can help scientists worldwide track how climate and weather influence the timing of seasonal shifts in plants and animals by becoming a Nature’s Notebook citizen scientist at home!
While there are both plants and animals on the Nature’s Notebook list, trees are particularly interesting right now, so why not start with a tree in your own yard or neighborhood? You’ll need to know which trees you have to see if they’re on the list, and we can help!
Visit the Ask a Naturalist page and submit a photo of your tree and experts from the Naturalist Center will get back to you soon!
What’s happening now in North Carolina? Let’s find out together! Keep an eye on the Museum’s Facebook page for more information on how to join in later this week to wrap up our first Citizen Science Adventure!
by Chris Goforth, Head of Citizen Science
For more information about our upcoming activities, conservation news and ground-breaking research, follow @NaturalSciences on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation with #visitNCMNS.