article in Scientific American re our database potential

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chrish
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article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by chrish »

There is an interesting article in the Feb 2013 issue of Scientific American that examines the development and value of citizen science projects like our database. It is an interesting read and really speaks to where we can go with this project if we can just get through some of the impediments that are slowing us down.

Yes, it is about birds mainly, but there are some important points and references to other important citizen science projects online. It's a pity we aren't far enough evolved to have gotten a mention.

Scientific American, Feb 2013, Vol 308, Issue 2, pp. 66-73
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by chris_mcmartin »

Teaser can be found here.

What were the points you found relevant to naherp or other herp-related databases?
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by chrish »

Here's a few pertinent quotes -

"A new age of participatory science is taking shape at the exact moment when society may need it most -- as we cope with complex problems such as climate change that require both copious data and an engaged citizenry. "Some of our biggest conservation, scientific and social challenges," says Abe Miller-Rushing, science coordinator at Acadia National Park in Maine, "can't be addressed without it.""

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"The project quickly hit a wall, however. Birders were entering around 50,000 records each month, too little to be useful, and that number would not budge. "After two and a half years," Kelling recalls, "we recognized that we were failing. We needed somebody from the birding community to champion us." The lab hired two experienced birders to oversee the project (and later added a third).

The key, the team quickly realized, was ensuring that birders got something out of the arrangement, too. The eBird scientists wanted data that could help with conservation. Yet that was not enough to motivate the bird-watchers, who had to spend extra time learning the database, changing their note-taking habits and uploading records. The new project leaders also pondered what tools bird-watchers would love.

Bird-watching is ultimately a form of list keeping. So, to attract the community, says Chris Wood, one of the project leaders, eBird would have to offer new and better things to do with those lists: organizing them, sharing them, using them as the basis for (mostly) friendly competition. Today eBird is almost like Facebook for birders, a social network they can use to track and broadcast their birding lives. The eBird database, as well as an associated smartphone app, lets birders organize everything from their life lists -- all the species they have ever seen -- to the number of times they have seen a particular species, to lists of what they have seen at favorite spots. Just as important, they can see everyone else's lists -- then try their damnedest to outdo them."


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Still, eBird is not all fun and bird games. Citizen science comes with serious challenges, perhaps the biggest of which is how to ensure that data are trustworthy. One way eBird's leaders help to maintain data quality is by relying on birders to serve as regional experts. In Colorado, Mlodinow and two other birders -- science teacher Bill Schmoker and wildlife monitor Christian Nunes -- spend hours every week uploading their observations and vetting others' records. They look at any data the system flags as questionable, up to 8 percent of the three million records entered each month. Their work helps to keep the records as accurate as possible. (It also trains algorithms to weight different contributors' records based on their level of expertise.)
These efforts seem to be bearing fruit. The eBird data are holding up and are beginning to have an impact on public policy. By overlaying eBird distribution data on U.S. public lands maps, researchers have determined which threatened or endangered birds occur on which federal agency's land at which time of year- knowledge the agencies use to determine budget priorities.
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Beyond aiding public policy, citizen science solves a problem of scale. Scientists cannot be everywhere at once, a fact that has left us with what Arfon Smith, director of citizen science at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, calls "fogs of ignorance" -- points on a map where we have almost no historical data on phenomena such as weather events or biodiversity. Expanding the number of people observing the world, whether flowers or stars or toxins, improves our capacity to understand it.
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Those are just a few comments from the article which I think are pertinent to us.
Ebird does what we are trying to do, and they do it well. They have 11,000 participants and over 110 million entries.

Yes, bird sighting data are not the same as herp sighting data, but that shouldn't be an excuse not to try and move forward with our database's potential.

Chris
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by chris_mcmartin »

Awesome. I may have to incorporate some of those quotes for my Snake Days talk (about the SD Data Collection Project).
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

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bird sighting data are not the same as herp sighting data
True enough. Typically, bird sighting data (fly-bys or -throughs) are far more meaningless than herp sighting data, from a site- or habitat-conservation standpoint. Herp sighting data almost always have far more value to conservation practitioners. We in NAFHA may never get to 110 million database records, but maybe we don't need to compare pennies to greenbacks. Maybe a million herp observations is just as valuable as 100 million fly-bys.

Not bashing e-bird by any means, I just don't want people to despair over our relatively paltry numbers. To achieve goals, you need to start with achievable goals. I'll be working towards my 100 this year. I can do it. Uta-free too, ha ha.

Cheers,
Jimi
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by Brian Hubbs »

One day utas might be thought to be in decline...as they are thought to be now in the Santa Monica mtns. Enter those utas...digital film is free.
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

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Maybe a million herp observations is just as valuable as 100 million fly-bys.
1 Million records has been a goal I have had for HERP for a few years now. Some people have told me it won't happen.

I think it will, and I plan on doing everything I can help US blaze a trail towards that goal..

The more people that hop on towards that 1 million goal the better.

I have a personal Goal of 10,000 records by the year 2017, and 25,000 before I die..

And No I am not talking about 1 million Uta records, but having a good 5,000 Uta records is good thing.. :thumb:

Fundad
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by chrish »

Jimi wrote:
bird sighting data are not the same as herp sighting data
True enough. Typically, bird sighting data (fly-bys or -throughs) are far more meaningless than herp sighting data, from a site- or habitat-conservation standpoint. Herp sighting data almost always have far more value to conservation practitioners.
A bit OT here, but don't underestimate the value of bird sighting data. Many lands are protected in this country not because birds live there, but because birds stop there on migration. So those incidental "fly-by" sightings are very important in influencing land use decisions. And birders are a hell of a lot more politically astute and powerful than herpers.
It isn't possible to compare bird sightings to sightings of non-vagile species like herps.
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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by Biker Dave »

I think many of the things that were quoted from the article regarding our database are in the process of being done by psyon now.

As long as we remember that there are many more birders around than herpers, our goal of increasing db entries is doable.

Rome wasnt built in a day!



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Re: article in Scientific American re our database potential

Post by FunkyRes »

Brian Hubbs wrote:One day utas might be thought to be in decline...as they are thought to be now in the Santa Monica mtns. Enter those utas...digital film is free.
Santa Monica Mountains are not the only place they are in decline.
How often are they found in Contra Costa County? Based upon museum records, they seem to have at one point been somewhat common in places like Brentwood, Antioch, Oakley, etc. but I have not found a single one and have only heard of one recent sighting in Mt Diablo State Park.

I think the Contra Costa problem is alteration of the habitat, but keeping records is the only way to watch these kind of declines happen and if possible take action to reverse them.
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