Countdown

On 10/10/2020, the team at TED launched Countdown, 'a global initiative to champion and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis, turning ideas into action'. The campaign includes short talks from over 50 speakers across 5 organised sessions:

• Urgency

• Leadership

• Transformation

• Breakthroughs

• Action

The videos are generally between 5 and 10 minutes long, so easy enough to fit into your lunch break, but packed full of information and ideas to help raise awareness of global climate issues, what we can do to solve them.

Protecting the natural environment is one of Prince William's key priorities for this new decade, watch his message below:

"We start this new decade knowing that it is the most consequential period in history," says Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's "Moonshot," he calls on us all to rise to our greatest challenge ever: the "Earthshot." A set of ambitious objectives for the planet, the Earthshot goals seek to protect and restore nature, clean the air, revive oceans, build a waste-free world and fix the climate - all in the next decade. To do it, we'll need people in all corners of the globe working together with urgency, creativity and the belief that it is possible to repair the Earth.

Here at BEES we believe that the better informed the public are the better our chances are of protecting our natural environment and biodiversity, in fact it's part of our ethos.

So get informed and get involved! Learn more at https://countdown.ted.com/

How Citizen Science is Benefiting Scientific Research in the UK

Our last post explored the role of citizen science in advancing the scope of ecological research whilst influencing public policy and engagement in important issues. Volunteers are utilised in scientific projects across the globe, but there is also a vast amount of research conducted at home, here in the UK.

Garden BirdWatch

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is just one of many organisations helping to understand and monitor changes in bird populations as a consequence of climate change (such as changes to migratory patterns, population declines, and breeding disturbances). Garden BirdWatch focuses on monitoring and research to build vast, robust datasets of native bird abundance/distribution.

Ongoing monitoring has allowed conservationists to determine the severity of population and range declines, as well as the number of breeding and wintering birds. Data gathered helps understand the drivers of change through determining the critical life cycle stage being impacted, is used to assess existing conservation initiatives and as a proxy for wider biodiversity trends. Combining bird watching with innovative analyses and the most up to date data-gathering technology, this scheme involves over 60,000 volunteers which can ultimately inform conservation policy through the vast quantity of data they collect.

Applications like BirdTrack allow birdwatchers to easily log and access their observations. The BirdWatch program itself involves recording the species and abundance of birds utilising resources in your garden then entering your data online. It’s a quick and easy way to improve our knowledge and help conserve these important ecological drivers! To find out more, visit here.

BeeWalk

BeeWalk is a standardised national survey of bumblebees set out to understand why Bumblebees are in decline across the UK. The data collected is fundamental in monitoring how populations are changing through time in response to changing land use, climate change and management, allowing scientists to identify early signs of population collapse and informing conservation policy.

So how does this work? Simply choose a set walking route (around 1-2 miles) and input onto the BeeWalk Website. Count and identify how many bumblebees you see along this route, once a month between March – October. All you need is some spare time and basic bumblebee identification skills (help on this is available here).

You can also check out the links below for ways to get involved with projects remotely from your own home!

https://www.volunteermatch.org/virtual-volunteering/Environment

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/citizen-science/project-plumage.html?fbclid=IwAR1dXo1tgZogkAOwEJECCdvn4fVIlftL1rY3Q6xDQYUwD1ygnYwEq3G8yVI

https://www.countryside-jobs.com/volunteers/volunteering-from-home?fbclid=IwAR1PiJuHyZuqHcmS93qY4VnGEzK58nDXKGBCjHe-q3fW7mHanN3LlyNv1NM

Elena

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Sources:

https://www.ceh.ac.uk/citizen-science

https://www.beewalk.org.uk/

https://www.bto.org/how-you-can-help)

Bonney, R. et al., 2009. Citizen Science: A Developing Tool. BioScience, 59(11), pp. 977-984.

How Valuable are Citizen Volunteers in Scientific Research?

I have always been fond of helping out with conservation projects and doing my bit for science, but the idea of participating in real scientific research can be a daunting thought! Luckily, you don’t need a PhD to get involved in research! Citizen science involves the work of volunteers collecting data such as water quality or monitoring of species abundance; leaving the data analysis and scientific writing to the ‘real’ scientists, (phew!) This form of data collection has been used for over a century and is particularly useful in conservation biology, environmental protection, and natural resource management.

Why is it Useful?

Projects such as the Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count in the US, (which was one of the first projects of its kind) have utilised Citizen Scientists for over 115 years now. This approach broadens the scope of research as projects can run across exceptional spatial and temporal scales, expanding the horizons of what scientists can achieve.

This method of ecological data collection is useful as a lot of scientific projects are underfunded; they cannot afford to hire professional scientists when thousands of data sources are required. Scientists can speed up field detection by increasing the number of people making observations as well as picking up rare phenomena. Thereby allowing scientists to confront enormous issues such as climate change as the threat of falling biodiversity across the globe means we must have access to rapidly changing patterns of species distribution, dispersal, habitat information and population size.

This method of data collection is becoming increasingly popular with the rising accessibility of large-scale databases through the internet and Geographic Information System (GIS) enabled web applications, enabling them to complement hypothesis-driven research. With the rise in smartphone usage there has also been huge growth in app-based monitoring systems like ‘BirdWatch’. Keep an eye out for our next post, where we will discuss this technology in more detail.

How is it utilised?

Citizen Scientists can be used in monitoring projects to discover patterns across space/time and answer specific questions, such as: How many individuals of this species are there? Are there differences in species number at different times of year? The data obtained can then be utilised by government agencies, policy makers, professional scientists, and other decision makers, ultimately driving and informing management and policy decisions as well as improving public knowledge and inspiring action. Examples of how this all comes together will, again, be explored in our next post.

How to ensure you are an effective citizen scientist

Sounds good, right? There are, however, some issues with this citizen contribution toward scientific method. The biggest limitation being the requirement for specialised knowledge, training, and equipment. Projects must be correctly planned, designed, carried out and evaluated, whilst data integrity must be maintained through methods such as standardised sampling procedures and effort controls. To ensure that you are making the best contribution to projects that interest you, it is advisable to deepen your knowledge around the relevant topics and project procedures/design. By building on your understanding of important subjects such as biodiversity, conservation, ecology and natural history through our course at https://www.beeanatureguide.org.uk/the-course you can ensure you are an effective and highly useful citizen scientist.

To read more and take a look at some of the projects you can get involved in, be sure to check out our next post!

Elena

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Sources

Bonney, R., et al., 2009. Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy. BioScience, 59(11), pp. 977-984.

Dickinson, J. L., et al., 2012. The current state of citizen science as a tool for ecological research and public engagement. Frontiers in Ecology & Environment, 10(6), pp. 291-297.

Dickinson, J. L., et al., 2010. Citizen Science as an Ecological Research Tool: Challenges and Benefits. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution & Systematics, 41, pp. 149-172.

Mckinley, D. C., et al., 2017. Citizen science can improve conservation science, natural resource management, and environmental education. Biological Conservation, 208, pp. 1-16.

Woodland Trust, 2020. Nature's Calendar; Species We Record. [Online] Available at: https://naturescalendar.woodlandtrust.org.uk/what-we-record-and-why/species-we-record/ [Accessed 08 09 2020].