The National Severe Storms Laboratory needs YOUR help with a research project!

If you live in the area shown on the map, the Precipitation Identification Near the Ground project (PING) wants YOU to watch and report on precipitation type.

PING is looking for young, old, and in-between volunteers to make observations—teachers, classes and families too! We have collected tens of thousands of observations since 2006, already making PING successful because of your help.

PING volunteers can spend a little or a lot of time making observations. The basic idea is simple: the National Severe Storms Laboratory will collect radar data from NEXRAD radars in your area during storm events, and compare that data with YOUR observations.

Why? Because the radars cannot see close to the ground, we need YOU to tell us what is happening. Scientists will compare your report with what the radar has detected, and develop new radar technologies and techniques to determine what kind of precipitation—such as snow, soft hail, hard hail, or rain—is falling where.

Help map, collect, and correct information about power generation locations around the world. Through placing pins of power generation sources on a map or filling out and reviewing correcting information about these sources you will help make studying power generation impact on the global carbon cycle and climate change reach new levels.

The Dark Sky Meter (available for iPhones) allows citizen scientists to contribute to a global map of nighttime light pollution. Light pollution is a growing problem in urban environments, but now you can help scientists better understand its effects on the environment. By utilizing the camera built in to your iPhone, the Dark Sky Meter actually measures ‘skyglow’ and updates the data in real time.

The Pro version of the app also charts weather conditions and cloud cover so you can take readings at optimal times. The app is as easy to use as taking a picture, and is a fun way to learn about your night sky.

How many stars can you see where you live? The Loss of the Night App (available for Android devices) challenges citizen scientists to identify as many stars as they can in order to measure light pollution. The app is fun and easy to use, and helps users learn constellations as they contribute to a global real-time map of light pollution.

Stargazing is a fantastic way to engage young scientists, but this ancient past time has become increasingly difficult in growing urban areas. Help scientists understand the effects of light pollution and learn about your night sky!

You don't need to leave the city to take part, in fact, the app is designed specifically for use in very polluted areas.

The more stars you observe, and the more often you run the app, the more precise the data for your location will become. As the seasons change so do the stars in the sky, and since there aren't so many very bright stars it is extremely helpful if urban users do measurements in each season.

iPhone users can contribute their own data via the dark sky meter project: http://www.scistarter.com/project/802-Dark%20Sky%20Meter

Anyone without a phone can take part during some parts of the year via GLOBE at Night: http://www.scistarter.com/project/169-GLOBE%20at%20Night

Starting March 15, 2013, the Audubon Society needs citizen scientists to track, report on, and follow the spring hummingbird migration in real time. A free mobile app makes it easy to report sightings, share photos and learn more about these remarkable birds.

Your participation will help scientists understand how hummingbirds are impacted by climate change, flowering patterns, and feeding by people.

You can participate at any level – from reporting a single sighting to documenting hummingbird activity in your community throughout the life of the project. Help scientists document the hummingbirds journey and direct change in the future to ensure these incredible birds do not disappear.

A study was conducted 40 years ago which suggested a link between climate and when west-European hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) come out of hibernation. Last year we repeated this study and over two thousand people logged around 45,000 hedgehogs across Britain. The unusual weather in 2012 has made patterns of activity quite confusing so we are repeating the survey this year to find out more.

We need your help to collect hedgehog records from 1st February until 31st August 2013. Understanding patterns of hedgehog behaviour across the UK will enable us to target the conservation strategy for this charming animal, which is currently in severe decline.

The iSeeChange Almanac is a socially networked weather Almanac for communities to collectively journal their climate experiences -- their observations, feelings, questions, and decisions --- against near-real time climate information.

Founded in April 2012 in Western Colorado, iSeeChange is a public radio and media experiment that fosters multimedia conversations between citizens and scientists about how seasonal weather and climate extremes affect daily American life. From the earliest spring recorded in the history of the United States, a landmark wildfire season, nationwide droughts, and weather records breaking everyday, climate affects every citizen and binds communities together.

iSeeChange is produced by Julia Kumari Drapkin in Western Colorado at KVNF Mountain Grown Community Radio as a part of Localore, a nationwide production of AIR in collaboration with Zeega, with principal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

We just launched the Almanac this week in Western Colorado. Stay tuned for more locations in the coming year!

In 2012, scientists in Montreal warned Canadians to expect there will be fewer outdoor skating days in the future.* Their predictions are based on the results of data taken from weather stations across Canada over the last fifty years. In some parts of Canada, they warn there may one day be no more backyard rinks at all. Remember the story of how Wayne Gretzky learned to play hockey on the backyard rink his father made for him in Brantford, Ontario? The scientists’ report says some day that will no longer be possible – at least, not in Brantford.

This prompted a group of geographers at Wilfrid Laurier University to create RinkWatch. We want people from coast to coast to coast to tell us about their rinks. We want you to pin the location of your rink on our map, and then each winter record every day that you are able to skate on it. Think of it as your rink diary. We will gather up all the information from all the backyard rinks, and use it to track the changes in our climate. The RinkWatch website will give you regular updates on the results. You will be able to compare the number of skating days at your rink with rinks elsewhere, and find out who is having the best winter for skating this year.

AirCasting is a platform for recording, mapping, and sharing health and environmental data using your smartphone. Each AirCasting session lets you capture real-world measurements, annotate the data to tell your story, and share it via the CrowdMap.

Using the AirCasting Android app, AirCasters can record, map, and share:
(o) sound levels recorded by their phone microphone;
(o) temperature, humidity, CO and NO2 gas concentrations recorded by the Arduino-powered AirCasting Air Monitor, and;
(o) heart rate measurements recorded by the Zephyr HxM.

Using AirCasting Luminescence, these sensor streams can also be represented using LED lights.

IceWatch USA gives you the opportunity to help scientists study how our climate is changing. With as little as 10 minutes, you can report information that will help to analyze how our climate will change in different regions of the United States and how our ecosystems are reacting to the change.

Due to the increased emissions of greenhouse gases, among other factors, our climate is changing. Accurately recording and analyzing "ice on" and "ice off" events (also known as "ice phenology"), as well as other factors like snow depth, air temperature, and wildlife observations, offers a practical way to learn how climate change affects our environment. Even if you live in a southern state that doesn't experience ice, your winter observations of air temperature, precipitation, and wildlife are still important for the big picture.

IceWatch USA needs your help, and becoming an IceWatcher is very easy. All you need to do is:

1. Choose a location to observe over the winter, such as a nearby lake, bay, or river.
2. Record and report your observations.

Your information will be entered into a database, compared to other reports, and shared with interested scientists. IceWatch USA is also a proud partner of the National Phenology Network.

Get started today!

How much snow is on the ground where you are? Cryosphere researchers at the University of Waterloo want to know!

The Snowtweets Project provides a way for people interested in snow measurements to quickly broadcast their own snow depth measurements to the web. These data are then picked up by our database and mapped in near real time. We are especially interested in using web-based digital technologies to map snow data; currently, the project uses the micro-blogging site Twitter as its data broadcasting scheme.

To view the snow depth measurements (or Tweets), we have developed a data visualization tool called Snowbird that lets you explore the reported snow depths around the globe. The viewer shows where the reports are located and how much snow there is at each reported site.

The Snowtweets Project is in early stages of development and we plan to update and improve it as we go along. We rely on user participation to measure snow depth (including zero snow depth) and then send the measurements in.

Project BudBurst, a NEON citizen science program, is a network of people across the United States monitoring plants as the seasons change. We are a national field campaign designed to engage the public in the collection of important ecological data based on the timing of leafing, flowering, and fruiting of plants (plantphenophases). Project BudBurst participants make careful observations of these phenophases. We are interested in observations from five plant groups – deciduous trees and shrubs; wildflowers and herbs; evergreens; conifers; and grasses. To participate, you simply need access to a plant.

Supporting and enhancing our understanding of continental-scale environmental change, Project BudBurst data are being collected in a consistent manner across the country for scientists and educators to use to learn more about the responsiveness of individual plant species to changes in local, regional and national climates. Thousands of people from all 50 states are participating and have generated a robust data set that is available for use by scientists and educators to increase understanding of how plants respond to environmental change. Formal and informal educators are finding Project BudBurst an effective approach to engaging their students and visitors in an authentic research experience.
Join our growing community!

Whether you have an afternoon, a few weeks, a season, or a whole year, you can make an important contribution to a better understanding of changing climates. Participating in Project BudBurst is easy – everything needed to participate is on the web site. Choose a plant to monitor and share your observations with others online. Not sure where to start? Take a look at our Ten Most Wanted species.

Project BudBurst is a NEON Citzen Science Program funded by the National Science Foundation.

CoCoRaHS, The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network is a unique, non-profit, community-based network of volunteers of all ages who measure and report precipitation. By using low-cost measurement tools, stressing training and education, and utilizing an interactive website, our aim is to provide the highest quality data for natural resource, education and research applications.

Each time a rain, hail, or snow storm occurs, volunteers take measurements of precipitation from their registered locations (reports of 'zero' precipitation are encouraged too!). The reports are submitted to the website and are immediately available for viewing. It's educational, but moreover, fun! Just wait until you start comparing how much rain fell in your backyard vs. your neighbor!

The data are used by the National Weather Service, meteorologists, hydrologists, emergency managers, city utilities, insurance adjusters, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, engineers, mosquito control, ranchers and farmers, outdoor and recreation interests, teachers, students, and neighbors in the community.

Join seafarers in the global scientific experiment to study marine phytoplankton.

The phytoplankton underpin the marine food chain, so we need to know as much about them as possible. To participate in this project, you'll need to create a Secchi Disk, a tool that measures water turbidity, and use the free iPhone or Android ‘Secchi’ application.

You can take a Secchi Disk reading as often as you wish, every day, once a week, twice a month, or just occasionally. The data you collect will help scientists around the world to understand the phytoplankton.

Join in and help make this the world’s largest public marine biological study.

By just taking photos and observing spiders, you can help the Explorit Science Center learn about which climates certain spiders live in and track the distribution of spiders over time.

Join the Explorit’s Community Science Project by finding and recording spiders in your home or neighborhood (as many as you can!). Use your camera or smart phone to take a photo of the spider and submit it online to add to our geographical database.

Spiders have long been thought of a useful natural method of pest control, but how will expected temperature changes or other environmental changes affect the spider’s usefulness as pest-killers and their distribution?

We don't yet know how climate change will impact spiders, and in turn impact agriculture such as crops and farms- but when we understand where spiders are living today, we will be better able to predict what may happen to spiders and agriculture in the future.

The SeaBC Sea Bird Count is a citizen science project organized by a volunteer group of long-distance birding sailors from around the world. The idea of a “SeaBC” was inspired by popular, long-standing land-based counts such as Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) and the Census Bird Count (CBC) in the U.K.

Our mission is to benefit seabird conservation by mobilizing the worldwide boating community to document ocean bird sightings, providing critical and seldom-recorded data on seabird abundance and distribution and on ocean migration routes. SeaBC sea bird count data goes to Cornell University’s eBird database, where boaters’ sightings become a resource for scientists worldwide.

Seabird knowledge is described as a frontier science: Last year a new seabird species was discovered and a species believed to be extinct was sighted. For some species, breeding or wintering areas remain unknown. This lack of knowledge is troubling given that BirdLife International estimates one-third of seabirds are now vulnerable or globally endangered due to threats from predators on nesting grounds, some fisheries, and plastics.

Landmark Trees of India is a documentation, geography, and monitoring project with a focus on famous, remarkable, and heritage trees of India.
India is a country of superlative population, superlative biodiversity, and superlative environmental variety. These landmark trees can teach us about the landscapes, biodiversity, and people of India and the other nations of the world.

Help scientists recover Arctic and worldwide weather observations made by United States’ ships since the mid-19th century.

These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and will improve our knowledge of past environmental conditions. Historians will use your work to track past ship movements and tell the stories of the people on board.

Hurricane Sandy is currently moving northward along the East coast of the USA (as of 10/29/12), and is expected to collide with a cold front and move inland across the northeastern USA during the next several days. On Friday, WaterIsotopes initiated a call for assistance in collecting samples of precipitation (both rain and snow) associated with the passage of this system.

The goal is to develop an unprecedented spatial and temporal dataset documenting the isotopic composition of rainwater (and snow) associated with this major storm system. These data will tell us about water sources and cycling within the storm system.

We're hoping to see evidence for changes in water sources to the storm as it first collides with the approaching cold front and then leaves the ocean to traverse the NE USA.

Get to know the nature of YOUR world! The Fairbanks Community of Observers is to encourage greater public clarity around environmental indicators of climate change in Vermont and northern New Hampshire. Using the website developed by the Fairbanks Museum, we'll collect your quantitative data focused on the life cycles of specific birds, butterflies and wildflowers that are sensitive to environmental change as well as seasonal weather data that is characteristic to our region.

The Community of Observers is for individuals, families, clubs, groups and schools. It is designed to encourage citizen scientists to gain a deeper understanding of the cycles and patterns that characterize our region through the seasons, and how the habitats that depend on these cycles might be affected by global climate shifts.

The Geo-Wiki Project is a citizen science network that hopes to improve the overall quality of land use and land cover maps across the globe. They host a variety of projects, all of which use their online Google Earth Application to enlist citizen scientists to improve spatial data. By comparing global land use and land cover data to the aerial photography that appears in Google Earth, you can help improve the validity of important data that is being used to solve important global problems.

Geo-Wiki supports a variety of projects that tackle issues that include climate change, the bio-diversity of plants, and the viability of changing agriculture.

They even have developed mobile apps that allow you to ‘ground truth’ data by adding your own photographs of what’s near you.

ZooTeach is a website where teachers and educators can share high quality lesson plans and resources that complement the Zooniverse citizen science projects. Citizen science offers a unique opportunity for any person, of any age, of any background to get involved and make a contribution to cutting edge science. Here at Zooniverse headquarters we believe that getting students involved in citizen science offers educators a free, easily accesible and inspiring opportunity to bring real science into the classroom.

SatCam lets you capture observations of sky and ground conditions with a smart phone app at the same time that an Earth observation satellite is overhead.

When you capture a SatCam observation and submit it to our server, it helps us to check the quality of the cloud products that we create from the satellite data. In return, we send you the satellite image that was captured at your location, anywhere in the world! SatCam supports the Terra, Aqua, and Suomi NPP satellites.

SatCam was developed at the Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison .

The Meteon Network is an ambitious collaboration in Italy to make scientific data from over 400 weather nationwide stations available in an easy to understand visual interface. You can now join in this groundbreaking work and gain access to loads of real time data. You can even add your own data and share analysis among the many members of the network.

The Meteon Network also employs several newer, more human centric, data products including something they call ‘weatherness’, among others, that are normalized to an easy to understand scale. All of these, and several other more traditional weather related measurements, are all displayed in real time on the Network’s interactive mapping application.

This kind of nationwide effort to monitor, analyze, and give citizens a more complete picture of weather may serve as a model for others to follow. Now is your chance to get involved in a trailblazing project and get into weather today!

AgeGuess is a simple on-line citizen science project and game where people can guess your age based on the face photos you link/upload. You will also be guessing other people’s age and comparing your results with others. By participating in AgeGuess you will create a first of its kind research data set for the study of human aging.

AgeGuess investigates the differences between perceived age (how old you look to other people) and chronological age (how old you actually are) and their potential power as an aging biomarker. Some of the specific topic we would like to address include: 


- Perceived age as predictor (biomarker) for age at death. Are people who look older than they are more likely to die early?

- Is 60 the new 50? We know that nowadays the average 60 year old is capable of doing things that fewer people of the same age where able to do 50 years ago. Is this difference also reflected in how old they look?

Please visit the intro page of our website for more information about these and other topics, such as: are there times when one ages faster, is perceived age heritable, and at what age are you best at guessing. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have other ideas that you would like to help us explore.

More than 7,000 ring-billed gulls have been marked near Montreal, Quebec with individually coded bands to track their movements throughout their annual cycle. We are more specifically interested by their post-breeding dispersal and their fidelity to their colony. Repeated observations of individuals also allow us to estimate annual survival. This is part of a larger study that aimed at understanding the behavior and population dynamics of these birds within an integrated management framework.

At this very moment in Serengeti National Park, 200 cameras are flashing throughout the night, in corners of the park where tourists never go.

These are camera traps -- remote, automatic cameras that take pictures of passing wildlife - and the Serengeti Lion Project is conducting the largest-ever camera trap survey to better understand the Serengeti ecosystem. The camera traps capture over 1,000,000 images of wildlife each year, capturing the grandeur of the wildebeest migration and rarely seen species from aardvarks to zebras.

Help to transmit these photos by satellite from the Serengeti to the U.S., where they can be analyzed to advance science and conservation. Join this unprecedented initiative to bring cutting edge technology to the wilds of Serengeti, and you'll get first access to witness the Serengeti Live on your computer.

"Did You See It?" is a new crowd sourcing initiative launched by the U.S. Geological Survey's Landslide Hazards Program to collect data about the occurrence of landslides within the United States.

Landslides are a serious geologic hazard common to almost every State in the United States.

The information will not only help scientists better understand the causes of landslides, possibly leading to improved disaster mitigation strategies, but also serve as public resource to educate citizens about potential risks in their communities.

What should we do about climate change?

Somehow we have to answer this question. You can help. The Climate CoLab seeks to harness the collective intelligence of contributors from all over the world to develop solutions to the problem of global climate change.

In this online global forum, people can create, analyze and select detailed proposals outlining the actions they believe should be taken to address climate change.

Adventurers and Scientist for Conservation is a unique initiative that helps create working reationships between scientists and adventure athletes to perform some truly unique research. Projects have been created all over the world and by groups of all kinds. The project even provides training for adventurers to become adventure-scientists.

The exciting benefits from these projects are numerous. Adventurers benefit by contributing to meaningful conservation research in areas that they visit. Additionally, scientists benefit from attaining inexpensive data that would have been previously hard or impossible to acquire. By no means, however are these adventure research projects limited to avid adventurers and professional scientists. Programs can be created anywhere for any age group. The goal of the project is to train and inspire the next generation of citizen scientists. In short, Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation will help you create a project, recruit participants, and start an Adventure Science project near you!

eButterfly is a citizen science project that helps document butterflies in Canada. By creating a user profile and documenting observed butterflies, citizens can help scientists better understand butterfly distribution in Canada. Users can also track which butterflies they have observed on a dynamic map application, and share photos with the eButterfly community.

The 2,045 eButterfly records of over 170 species help the Canadian Facility for Ecoinformatics Research at the University of Ottawa's Department of Biology better understand how butterflies adapt to environmental change. Eventually, the data you collect will help contribute to the preservation of Canada’s great biodiversity.

Solitary bees and wasps in your own backyard!!!

Native Buzz is a citizen science project created by the University of Florida (UF) Honey Bee Research and Extension Lab. Our goal is to learn more about the nesting preferences, diversity and distribution of our native solitary bees and wasps, share the information gained and provide a forum for those interested in participating in the science and art of native beekeeping (and wasp-keeping!).

Here at University of Florida Native Buzz you can keep track of your own native buzz nest site and see the results of other participant’s nest sites.

Osprey Watch is a project of the Center for Conservation Biology for birdwatchers across the nation to help identify osprey nests and observe osprey behavior. The project hopes to acquire data across a large enough spatial scale in order to address three pressing issues associated with aquatic ecosystems: climate change, depletion of fish stocks, and environmental contaminants. Ospreys are great indicators of the health of aquatic ecosystems as they are sensitive to small changes in fish populations and water quality.

OspreyWatch has almost 500 Osprey Watchers monitoring almost 800 nests across the nation and in Europe. Ospreys are incredible birds of prey and viewing them in the wild can be an amazing experience. And it may be easier than you think. Many osprey nest in man made objects and might even be right outside your backdoor.

So grab a camera, some binoculars, and locate a nest near you to add photos and descriptions to OspreyWatch’s interactive map. You can even find other nests in your area and help monitor and add updates to nesting activity.

The North American Bird Phenology Program, part of the USA-National Phenology Network, was a network of volunteer observers who recorded information on first arrival dates, maximum abundance, and departure dates of migratory birds across North America. Active between 1880 and 1970, the program was coordinated by the Federal government and sponsored by the American Ornithologists' Union. It exists now as a historic collection of six million migration card observations, illuminating almost a century of migration patterns and population status of birds. Today, in an innovative project to curate the data and make them publicly available, the records are being scanned and placed on the internet, where volunteers worldwide transcribe these records and add them into a database for analysis.

Help scientist improve maps of Mars and participate in other research tasks to help NASA manage the large amount of data from the Red Planet.

Users create Martian profiles and become "citizens" of the planet. In the map room, citizens can then earn Martian credits by helping place satellite photos on Mars’s surface, counting craters, and even helping the rovers Spirit and Opportunity by tagging photos with descriptions.

The highly interactive website is rich in content and contains other informational videos and mapping applications for citizens to tour Mars and get to know every nook and cranny of its rocky surface.

Become a Martian, explore Mars, have fun!

THE BROAD PICTURE: The aim of MammalMAP is to update the distribution records of all African mammal species. Through collaborations with professional scientists, conservation organisations, wildlife authorities and citizen scientists across Africa, we consolidate all reliable and identifiable evidence (camera trap records, photographs) of current mammal locations into an open-access digital database. The database software automatically generates online distribution maps of all recorded species which are instantly visible and searchable. The information consolidated within MammalMAP will not only yield crucial information for species conservation policies and landscape conservation policies, but provides an excellent platform for educating the public about African mammals and their conservation challenges.

WHY MAMMALMAP IS NECESSARY: In Africa, our knowledge of mammal distribution patterns is based largely on historical records. However, the last three centuries have seen extensive human-modification of African landscapes with the associated conversion, compression and fragmentation of natural land. With further land development presenting a likely reality for the future, the effectiveness of mammal conservation efforts depends on ecological records being updated so that they accurately reflect mammal distribution patterns in the 21st Century. With MammalMAP we plan to conduct these ecological updates over the coming years, by mapping the current distribution of mammal species (including marine mammals and small mammals) across Africa.

HOW MAMMALMAP CONTRIBUTES TO CONSERVATION: The conservation benefits of this research are multiple. First, the comparison of these updated distribution records with both historical and future records will enable the detection of species’ distribution changes in response to human-related and climate-related habitat changes. These change detections will assist the guidance of continent-wide conservation policies and decision making processes. Second, the research will promote and facilitate interdisciplinary and international collaboration amongst scientists and conservation practitioners, with potential benefits to the advancement of conservation science. Finally, both the project input stage (data collection) and output stage (data dissemination) will offer interactive, dynamic and widely applicable education tools suitable for both formal and informal education sectors.

THE WHERE AND THE HOW OF MAMMALMAP: The area of interest for MammalMAP is the whole of Africa. To achieve this we collaborate with scientists, conservation organisations, wildlife authorities and citizen scientists across the continent. Our methods involve consolidating evidence of mammal occurrence in a given location (camera trap records, photographs and other reliable records) into a digital database hosted by the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town. In time, we will use the records in the database to generate distribution maps for all recorded species, in the same way that the ADU has done for birds, reptiles, frogs and butterflies.

Temperature Blast is a Maryland Science Center C3 Citizen Science project designed to introduce participants to methods of studying climate. Citizen Scientists collect live and archive Weatherbug data from select stations in the Baltimore region to compare temperatures and log this data for scientists.

Scientists at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study then use this data to test models of temperature patterns across the city to aid in urban planning. This data illustrates the Urban Heat Island effect on the area, a phenomenon classified by temperature differences between a metropolitan area and more rural landscape nearby. An Urban Heat Island is not an effect of climate change, but rather of our activity shaping the environment around us.

Using either this website or our Smartphone application (available free of charge for both iPhone and Android) Citizen Scientists submit temperature data from six weather stations in the Baltimore region. The purpose of this is to collect a stream of simultaneous data from multiple sites in and around the metropolitan area. This data, along with first-hand location observations, will be used to understand the Urban Heat Island Effect in Baltimore.

Anyone with access to the Internet and/or a Smartphone can be a Citizen Scientist and participate in Temperature Blast!? While the data obtained from the program is relevant to the Baltimore metropolitan region, there is no geographic or age restriction for Citizen Scientists.

Mountain Watch is an ongoing trail-side citizen science program that tracks reproductive (flower/fruit development) plant phenology of a small set of alpine and forest plants In the Eastern Appalachian mountains and other Northeast areas. The program has had over 9,000 plant phenophase observations made by volunteers since 2005, and a similar number of observations made by trained staff. This citizen science program is one component of the alpine ecology and climate science research being conducted by the Appalachian Mountain Club in the Northeast mountains.

By 1900, Trumpeter Swans were extirpated from their nesting and wintering areas in Central and Eastern North America. Their historic migrations to southerly wintering sites were totally destroyed. In recent decades wild nesting populations of Trumpeters have been successfully restored in several northerly states and Ontario. Most swans now winter near their northern breeding areas, but an unknown number are pioneering southward where they are beginning to establish use of more southerly wintering sites.

Little is known regarding the numbers and groupings of southward migrants, the location and characteristics of the sites they are pioneering, the duration of use, or problems they may be encountering. By providing information through Trumpeter Watch, observers can help document the changing distribution of wintering Trumpeter Swans and help identify potential new southerly wintering sites.

Journey North engages students in a global study of wildlife migration and seasonal change. K-12 students share their own field observations with classmates across North America. They track the coming of spring through the migration patterns of monarch butterflies, robins, hummingbirds, whooping cranes, gray whales, bald eagles— and other birds and mammals; the budding of plants; changing sunlight; and other natural events. Find migration maps, pictures, standards-based lesson plans, activities and information to help students make local observations and fit them into a global context. Widely considered a best-practices model for education, Journey North is the nation's premiere "citizen science" project for children. The general public is welcome to participate.

Researchers at the Trumpeter Swan Society need volunteers to report their sightings of Trumpeter Swans in the Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain regions.

Why? By 1900 Trumpeter Swans were extirpated from their nesting and wintering areas in Central and Eastern North America. Their historic migrations to southerly wintering sites were totally destroyed. In recent decades wild nesting populations of Trumpeters have been successfully restored in several northerly states and Ontario. An unknown number are pioneering southward where they are beginning to establish use of more southerly wintering sites. Little is known regarding the numbers and groupings of southward migrants, the location and characteristics of the sites they are pioneering, the duration of use, or problems they may be encountering.

By providing information through Trumpeter Watch, observers can help document the changing distribution of wintering Trumpeter Swans and help increase this vulnerable swan population.

WeSolver was created to define and address the most important problems that face human beings. It was made for everyone, a gift to the solvers in the world and anyone can help in any way they are willing to.

There will be many ways to participate in the site itself from creating, reading, promoting, linking, sharing and policing content. WeSolver will be open and transparent to everyone while respecting any individuals wish to remain anonymous should they so choose. Hopefully people will find new connections and relationships between seemingly different problems and solutions inspiring experimentation and innovative approaches.

How can we possibly solve the many problems that face us as a species without using every available asset to do so? How can we leave this work in the hands of experts or governments or any other organization to solve on their own? It would be foolish to ignore the potential solutions which come when everyone is invited to the table. Our common future depends on it.

Now's the time to set up your American Kestrel nest box! This bird's population is experiencing long-term declines in North America, and existing data are insufficient for understanding the causes. The American Kestrel Partnership is an international research network designed to generate data, models, and conservation plans for kestrel habitat and populations at large spatial scales. The Partnership unites the data-generating capacity of citizen scientists with the data-analysis expertise of professional scientists by promoting research collaboration among citizen scientists, universities, government agencies, conservation organizations, schools, and businesses. The Partnership also fosters long-term conservation values and appreciation of science by engaging the public with hands-on research experiences.

The Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count (WMTC) is a citizen-science project designed to census the size of these winter colonies. As the name implies, it is conducted over a two-week period around the (American) Thanksgiving weekend in November by a large number of volunteers. The project is coordinated by several individuals including Dennis Frey (professor emeritus, Cal Poly) and Mia Monroe (National Parks Service & Coordinator of California Monarch Campaign, Xerces Society).

We are currently seeking research assistants to join our field team in Ecuador studying the conservation ecology of reptiles and amphibians.

While Ecuador is a relatively small country—it’s roughly the size of Arizona—it stands as the third most diverse country in the world for amphibians (510 species) and is seventh for reptiles (430 species), making it a herpetologically mega-diverse region. Due to the severe deforestation taking place in addition to many other pressures on Ecuador’s fauna, RAEI’s research program aims to study, document, and preserve these rich and unique communities of reptiles and amphibians found within the country’s diverse array of ecosystems.

As we are now in our 8th year working in Ecuador, we have study sites encompassing both the coastal forests in western Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest on the eastern side of the Andes Mountains. The work that research participants will be involved with will primarily consist of conducting night surveys for reptiles and amphibians (however other taxa such as invertebrates are also of interest), animal data collection, and lab work. Lab work consists of more detailed information such as scale counts (for reptiles) and other morphological information, animal measurements, screening for chytrid desease (amphibians), preservation (only when necessary), and acquisition of DNA samples. Diagnostic photographs of all animals are taken. Other tasks include animal handling and general note taking and data organization.

If you are a SCUBA diver, we ask that you send us data logged by your dive computer, so we can put it to scientific use! Millions of divers dive all around the world everyday, with state-of-the-art dive computers that log temperature as a function of depth. As a citizen scientist scuba diver, you can help put this information to the use of oceanographers and marine scientists. Send us your dive site location & an export of your dive computer log; or just write up in an email the information you record in your logbook (like surface temperature, bottom temperature, date, time, location, dive computer brand)!

The goal of this project is to channel temperature & location data from divers to scientists. The data collected will be processed by graduate students and will be made available online on our website for anyone to download.

GreenprintMaps presents the urban forest of the Greenprint region – Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, El Dorado, Sutter, and Yuba Counties. Everyone is invited to join us in mapping all of our trees – in parks, on streets, at schools, in parking lots and at home. You can find trees, add trees, ask a question about a tree, and calculate the value of a tree. GreenprintMaps is fun and easy for everyone. Cities can better manage their trees, planners can protect trees, scientists can combat tree pests and diseases, and homeowners can share their tree stories. We hope you’ll help us grow the best regional urban forest in the nation.

The goal of the Chestnut Mega-Transect Project is to document the current status of American chestnuts along the Appalachian Trail. Using the idea that the Appalachian Trail is really a transect through a unique US ecosystem, TACF trains hikers to identify and count American chestnuts along the Appalachian Trail as divided into approximately 1 miles segments.

Science Hack Day is a 48-hour-all-night event that brings together designers, developers, scientists and other geeks in the same physical space for a brief but intense period of collaboration, hacking, and building 'cool stuff'. By collaborating on focused tasks during this short period, small groups of hackers are capable of producing remarkable results. Some Hack Days have a specific focus. There have already been very successful Music Hack Days and Government Hack Days. It's time for a Hack Day focused on science!

Wherever you are – anywhere in the world – contribute to science by taking a photo of a blank white piece of paper!

Photos are needed on the following dates:

September 17 and 18, 2011
September 23, 2011
November 6, 2011
December 12, 2011
February 4, 2012
March 20, 2012
May 5, 2012
June 20, 2012
August 6, 2012
September 22, 2012
November 5, 2012

Your photo will used to measure how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back from the Earth -- our planet's "albedo." It's one way scientists can monitor how much energy – and heat – is being absorbed by our planet. By contributing to the Albedo Project, you will be providing data that can be used to examine the similarities and differences of reflectivity around the world.

Should grassy surfaces have the same value in Brazil as in Norway? How does clay soil in the southeastern USA differ from sandy desert in the southwestern USA? Is there any difference in urban “hot spots” that can be attributed to latitude?

Individuals, schools, small and large groups can all use these data to help inform activities that are appropriate and effective for their communities. Whether it is maintaining the health of parks and green spaces, or legislating green building codes, there is something each can do. It is the hope of this project to present some of the actions taken, as well as follow their albedo records over time.

We are monitoring butterfly population responses to climate change in North Cascades National Park and Mount Rainier National Park. Please join our effort.

Subalpine meadows in these two National Parks are expected to shrink dramatically due to the effects of climate change, but as of now, the rate and magnitude of this change is unknown. Butterflies make ideal indicator species because they are particularly sensitive to climatic changes, and are relatively easy to identify in the field by scientists and volunteers alike. Trained participants will hike to scenic alpine meadows and help scientists identify and count butterflies along the way.

We need people to document where and when they see Pika (smallest member of the rabbit family), hear pika, or see their hay piles.

If you are out hiking in scree fields, this is a great opportunity to contribute.

Volunteers are needed weekly to collect water samples and other physical climate measurements, then identify species of phytoplankton under a light microscope while watching for potentially harmful algal blooms (HABs) and signs of environmental disturbance in our marine waters.

Redwood Watch needs volunteers to take photographs of redwood trees and submit them to researchers. Your data will help researchers understand where redwoods survive and help track redwood forest migration over time.

If you spot a redwood in a park, your own backyard, or in a botanical garden, snap a picture and submit it online. You can use a digital camera, or the Redwood Watch iPhone application, powered by iNaturalist.

Scientists don't yet know how climate change will impact the redwood forest. By understand where redwoods grow well today, scientists can better predict where the redwood forests of will thrive in the future. Join Redwood Watch and help redwoods survive!

The project is a partnership between the Save the Redwoods League, iNaturalist, Google Earth Outreach, and the California Academy of Sciences.

You can help the fight against invasive species by tracking phenophases of invasives through the USA National Phenology Network’s Nature’s Notebook. We need observers to track species such as leafy spurge, purple loosestrife, and tamarisk-species designated as invasive by the USFS, USGS and NatureServe.

Invasive species have infested hundreds of millions of acres across the United States, causing widespread disruption to ecosystems and reducing biodiversity. The invasive species threat is one of the top priorities of the US Forest Service. Knowledge of invasive species phenology can assist managers to better control invasives and predict future spread. The purpose of the Track Invasive Species project is to monitor distribution and phenophases, or life cycle events, of invasive species across the US.

In the Health Tracking Network, people across the world work together to monitor common illnesses and discover factors related to illness.

When you join the Health Tracking Network, you:
* spend 2-3 minutes per week answering questions about cold and flu symptoms and other topics;
* earn money for charities of your choice; and
* can track your own health, fitness, or anything of interest to you with separate tracking tools.

The Health Tracking Network has no ads, and participation is free and completely anonymous.

We seek volunteers from across the world. You must be 18 years or older to participate.

Plant a lilac or a dogwood and contribute to a phenology monitoring project over 50 years in existence! While the dogwood will soon be added to the Cloned Plants Project, the root of the USA-NPN Cloned Plants Project is the historic cloned lilac project. Participants plant a lilac clone and record observations of recurring life cycle stages such as leafing and flowering via the USA-NPN webpage. Observations of cloned plants made over large geographical regions are valuable in predicting crop yields and bloom dates of other species, controlling insect and disease infestations, and assisting with monitoring the impact of global climate change.

The cloned lilac available through the USA-NPN is Syringa x chinensis, 'Red Rothomagensis'. The cloned dogwood soon available is Cornus florida, ‘Appalachian Spring’. Generally, lilacs grow throughout the northern and central US, while dogwoods are better grown by observers in the southeast and gulf states. Review the purchase options on our website, and once you have received your cloned plant, check the information on selecting a site for planting and how to take care of your cloned plant. Cloned plant phenology is observed and recorded using the monitoring instructions found on the How to Observe page and using the details on the plant profile page.

The OPAL Biodiversity Survey needs citizen scientists in England to help uncover the diverse range of wildlife in hedges. By contributing, you'll help researchers learn more about the importance of hedges and how we can improve them.

Hedges support many animals by providing them with food and shelter. Berries and seeds are food for birds, while holes beneath the hedge are often home to small mammals. You’ll also discover caterpillars, shieldbugs and many other invertebrates living among the leaves.

By sharing your observations with the project, reseachers can instantly rate the condition of your hedge and offer suggestions on how to improve it.

This is one of five OPAL surveys across England to learn more about the state of the environment. Anyone can get involved. The studies are open to all ages and abilities, and your contribution will be important in helping scientists build up a picture of England's natural environment.

The OPAL Climate Survey consists of four ways to help researchers investigate how human activities affect the climate. These include:

Activity 1 - Contrails in the Sky: By looking for contrails (tracks left by planes) in the sky and reporting your results online, you'll help scientists test the accuracy of existing computer models that tell us where contrails should be.

Activity 2 and 3 - Measuring the Wind: In Activity 2, you'll use a mirror and compass to measure the wind direction at cloud height. In Activity 3, you'll use bubbles to calculate the wind direction and speed at our height.

Activity 4 - How the Weather Affects Us: You'll answer simple questions about how hot or cold you feel and the types of clothes you are wearing.

This is one of five OPAL surveys across England to learn more about the state of the environment. Anyone can get involved. The studies are open to all ages and abilities, and your contribution will be important in helping scientists build up a picture of England's natural environment.

Join RainLog's network of over 1,000 volunteers that use backyard rain gauges to monitor precipitation across Arizona and in neighboring states. Data collected through this network will be used for a variety of applications, from watershed management activities to drought planning at local, county, and state levels.

All you need to participate is a rain gauge and access to the Internet. Volunteers select a rain gauge, install it at home, and report daily total rainfall amounts through the online data entry form. Volunteers are asked to track daily or monthly precipitation amounts.

Precipitation amounts are highly variable across Arizona due to topography and seasonal weather patterns. This is especially true during the monsoon season, when thunderstorms can produce heavy rainfall that is very localized.

Your observations will provide valuable information to be used in drought monitoring and resource management decision-making.

All data posted by volunteers is available in real-time in maps. These maps are useful in tracking high-resolution variability in precipitation patterns and potential changes in drought status. As more people participate and more information is gathered, the resolution of the maps will improve.

Help scientists recover worldwide weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I. These transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections and improve a database of weather extremes. Historians will use your work to track past ship movements and the stories of the people on board.

Educators and non profit groups can create and manage their own citizen science class activity or projects with easy to use free online tools.

Create a citizen science project in minutes and avoid costly development costs.

Maryland Science Center's Communicating Climate Change project needs volunteers to take temperature measurements across the urban-rural gradient. The study will look at Urban Heat Islands, which provide a glimpse of what the world will look like with warmer temperatures.

The Urban Heat Island Effect describes the temperature difference between a metropolitan area and the more rural landscape nearby. The Urban Heat Effect is not an effect of climate change, but rather of human activity shaping our environment. One may ask, if we can make changes on a local scale, are we also responsible for changes globally?

The Maryland Science Center and our research partners at the Baltimore Ecosystem Study are proud to join eleven science centers across the nation in the Association of Science and Technology Center’s C3: Communicating Climate Change Citizen Science project.

You too can be a scientist and take part a long term research study!

There is no geographic or age restriction on participation.

The Dragonfly Swarm Project uses the power of the internet to allow everyone to participate in a large-scale study of dragonfly swarming behavior. Participants observe dragonfly swarms wherever they occur, make observations of the composition and behavior of the swarm, then submit a report online.

Data is compiled from the reports by an aquatic entomologist with a passion for dragonflies. Her goal is to use the data collected from participants for two purposes: 1) to publish data from a massive number of dragonfly swarms in the scientific literature, making this information available to scientists, and 2) to provide information about this behavior to the public. Many people see dragonfly swarms and are curious about what they see. The creator of this project hopes to provide answers to the curious while simultaneously collecting information from eye-witnesses to improve our overall knowledge of this fascinating behavior.

Because any given person has to be in the right place at the right time to see a dragonfly swarm, this project isn't possible for a single scientist to do alone. Collecting data from a large network of people is thus the best way to study dragonfly swarming behavior. Participation requires only curiosity and a few minutes of your time, so keep an eye out for dragonfly swarms in your area this summer and send in your reports!

Thanks in advance for your participation!

EteRNA is the first-ever global laboratory where scientists, educators, students, online gamers, and any human being with a strong interest in unlocking the mystery of life will collectively help solve world's biggest scientific problems.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a substance that our cells use to translate and express genetic information from our DNA. We now know that folding and shape-shifting allows RNA and its partners to control the cell in a predictable fashion. However, the full biological and medical implications of these discoveries are still being worked out.

By playing EteRNA, you will help extend and curate the first large scale library of synthetic RNA designs. You play by designing RNAs, tiny molecules at the heart of every cell. If you win the weekly competition your RNA is synthesized and scored by how well it folds. Your efforts will help us understand, dissect, and control the functional properties of real and designed RNAs from bacteria, viruses, and our own cells. Join the global laboratory!

SKYWARN is a national network of volunteer severe weather spotters. The spotters are trained by local National Weather Service Forecast Offices on how to spot severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, and flooding. In some parts of the country, spotters also report snowfall and ice accumulation.

During hazardous weather, such as severe thunderstorms, floods, tornadoes, snow and ice storms, SKYWARN volunteers report what is happening at their location. They are asked to report whenever certain criteria are met such as when one inch of rain has fallen, four inches of snow is on the ground, a thunderstorm is producing hail, or trees have been blown down.

Reports arrive at the forecaster's office via the telephone, fax, Internet, and amateur radio. The reports are combined with radar and satellite data to determine what the storms will do next. Spotters provide the "ground-truth" to forecasters. Radar may tell us that heavy snow is falling, but it can not tell us how much snow is on the ground or if rain is mixing with the snow. Spotters do. The reports are used by forecasters to send out public statements, warnings and advisories, and short-term forecasts.

Two-thirds of SKYWARN volunteers are licensed amateur radio operators. Amateur radio plays a big role in the SKYWARN program. During severe weather, amateur radio volunteers man a radio station at our office. They talk to our spotters in the particular area that a storm is hitting and request information needed by the forecasters such as hail size or rainfall accumulation. Large storms such as hurricanes can knock out phone service. SKYWARN amateur radio volunteers help us when there are communications outages so that we can continue to receive weather reports and feed warnings and other critical information out to communities.

SKYWARN volunteers are people who either have a strong interest in weather or are public service oriented. This includes amateur radio operators, REACT members, or emergency response personnel. Our spotters are all ages beginning as young as 14 and range well into retirement age. We have farmers, pilots, engineers, housewives, lawyers, television cameramen, teachers, students, firemen, and more. Our volunteers are truly diverse but with a common interest in weather and a strong desire to help their community.

Adopt-A-Peak volunteers agree to visit a peak or trail section in the Appalachian Mountains periodically during the growing season. Volunteers will help track long-term trends in plant flowering, fall foliage, and visibility conditions on the mountain they adopt.

Hikers are great resources for frequent reporting from remote areas that could not be observed otherwise. Adopt-A-Peak focuses our monitoring efforts on a specific location year after year. Volunteers are needed for forest and alpine flower monitoring from late May through August, but this effort intensifies in June, which is Flower Watch Month. Fall foliage monitoring can begin as early as September and go through the end of leaf drop.

Visibility is monitored on every visit by taking a photograph. Volunteers are encouraged to monitor both plants and visibility.

Individuals, school groups, outing clubs, flower groups: Adopt-A-Peak!

Mountain Watch needs hikers like you to observe the timing of flower and fruit development along Appalachian Mountain trails. These data will be included in a long-term study to understand how shifts in climate trends may impact mountain flora.

Plants in ecosystems that depend on colder weather, such as alpine and other mountain environments, may act as sensitive bioindicators of climate change. Scientists are paying particular attention to alpine and arctic ecosystems around the world. Although alpine areas in the northeast United States are rare, they are economically, socially, and spiritually a distinct part of the Appalachian mountains.

Mountain Watch scientists will compile your data and produce a web-based database of the observations. As this collection of information grows, it will be analyzed for trends indicating climate change. The information will also be used for public education, to raise media attention, and to advocate for appropriate environmental policy to address climate change.

Mountain Watch will share your monitoring reports with its partners, the National Phenology Network and the Appalachian Trail Mega-Transect Monitoring project, contributing unique mountain data to these larger national and regional studies. By collecting data from thousands of hikers in the Appalachian Mountains, the project aims to further scientific understanding of how global climate change affects the health and vitality of key flora in mountain ecosystems.

CitSci.org is a platform that supports a variety of citizen science programs using a centralized database to store and deliver science data, with a focus on community based monitoring programs. This platform allows program coordinators to create their own projects and datasheets, manage members, define measurements, create analyses, and even write feedback forms.

The Colorado River Watch Network supports volunteers who monitor the water quality at strategically located sites across the Colorado River watershed from West Texas to the coast. The network serves as an early warning system that alerts the Lower Colorado River Authority to potential water quality threats.

The network's mission is to encourage and support community-based environmental stewardship by providing citizens, teachers, and students with the information, resources, and training necessary to monitor and protect the waterways of the lower Colorado River watershed.

Volunteer monitors submit data for approximately 120 sites each year, with an average annual total of roughly 1,000 monitoring events reported.

Map habitat in backyards, parks, and schools. Work towards more sustainable landscapes. The YardMap network lets you draw your landscapes with a beautiful online mapping tool and helps you learn about how to use your outdoor spaces (big or small) to aid birds and other wildlife. Connect to other citizen scientists, solve problems, share your maps and good ideas all while helping to build an invaluable database of habitat data for Cornell Lab of Ornithology Scientists.

Tree Tracker participants will take part in an exciting training session and then visit specific trees in their neighborhoods to observe and record the life cycle changes in trees. This information can then be used to learn more about changes in climate. Participants upload their observations to the Project Budburst website, which professional scientists then use. Citizen scientists can see recently uploaded observations as well as year-end reports from the professional scientists.

The trainings will happen during the fall and spring of each year and participants will then collect data throughout the year. We encourage anyone interested in the project to get in touch with us so that we can register them for the next available training. Even if you can't make the training, you can still make observations!

ClimatePrediction is a distributed computing project that aims to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to the year 2300 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, the project needs people around the world to volunteer time on their computers - time when their computers are on but not being used at full capacity.

The project needs you to run a climate model program on your computer. The model will run automatically in the background whenever you switch your computer on, and it should not affect any other tasks for which you use your computer. As the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns evolve on your unique version of the world. The results are sent back to project coordinators via the Internet, and you will be able to see a summary of your results on the website. ClimatePrediction uses the same underlying software, BOINC, as many other distributed computing projects and, if you like, you can participate in more than one project at a time.

Climate change, and our response to it, are issues of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs, and much else. Current research suggests that the Earth will probably warm over the coming century; Climateprediction should, for the first time, tell us what is most likely to happen.

COASST is a network of citizen scientists that monitor marine resources and ecosystem health at 300 beaches across northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.

Team volunteers pledge to survey their beach every month. In return, the COASST office pledges to put all of the data together, decipher the patterns across the entire survey range, and give that information back out to volunteers and the communities.

COASST believes that the citizens of coastal communities are essential scientific partners in monitoring marine ecosystem health. By collaborating with citizens, natural resource management agencies, and environmental organizations, COASST works to translate long-term monitoring into effective marine conservation solutions.

Tracking Climate in Your Backyard seeks to engage youth in real science through the collection, recording, and understanding of precipitation data in the forms of rain, hail, and snow.

The purpose of this project is to encourage youth, specifically ages 8-12, to better understand the scientific process by engaging them in the collection of meaningful meteorological data in their community. In this way, youth develop an understanding of scientific methods and standardization, and by recording and sharing their data through a citizen science project, they recognize the importance of accurate data collection. The citizen science portion of the project, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, collects precipitation data for scientific analysis and for issuance of severe storm warnings and flash flooding events. We believe that when youth know they are contributing data to a real, scientific cause, their engagement levels rise.

This National Science Foundation-funded project is a collaboration between the Paleontological Research Institution and Museum of the Earth, which have experience in professional development and informal education, New York State 4-H, which provides an excellent outreach base and fosters hands-on, experiential learning for youth, and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, which runs a citizen science project to record precipitation measurements in an online database.

Nature's Calendar is a survey conducted by thousands of volunteers who record the signs of the seasons in the United Kingdom.

This could mean noting the first ladybird or swallow seen in your garden in spring, or the first blackberry in your local wood in autumn.

If you live in the UK, you don’t have to be an expert to take part, and lots of help is given, including a nature identification booklet that you receive when you register.

This kind of recording has moved from being a harmless hobby to a crucial source of evidence as to how our wildlife is responding to climate change.

The Mastodon Matrix Project needs citizen volunteers to analyze actual samples of matrix (the dirt) from a 14,000 year old mastodon excavated in New York! Learn the process of science and work like a paleontologist on real research material!

Volunteers sort through the matrix to find shells, bones, hair, pieces of plants, and rocks from the time when the mastodons lived and roamed the Earth. The matrix and discoveries are then sent back to the Paleontological Research Institution, where they will be cataloged and further analyzed by paleontologists to help scientists form a true picture of the ecology and environment of the late Pleistocene.

Mastodons are extinct relatives of modern elephants. Mastodons were numerous and widespread in North America up until around 10,000 years ago, when they became extinct--with many other species--at the end of the last glacial period.

ClimateWatch aims to create a leading online database for environmental scientists studying the effects of climate change in Australia. It will be created from data entered by citizen scientists and other volunteer observers all around the country who will record their observations and then enter them into the ClimateWatch website.

Climate change is affecting rainfall and temperature across Australia. As a consequence, flowering times, breeding cycles and migration movements are also changing. Scientists have very little data available to understand the impacts of this. You can help.

By observing the timing of natural events (the study of phenology), such as the budding of flowers, falling of leaves and the appearance of migratory birds, the data you collect and record will help shape the country's scientific response to climate change.

Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the birds they see at their feeders from November through early April and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. Counts can be submitted online or on paper forms.

Anyone with an interest in birds can participate! FeederWatch is conducted by people of all skill levels and backgrounds, including children, families, individuals, classrooms, retired persons, youth groups, nature centers, and bird clubs.

FeederWatch data help scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance. FeederWatch results are regularly published in scientific journals and are shared with ornithologists and bird lovers nationwide. The counts you submit will make sure that your birds (or lack of birds) are represented in papers and in the results found in the Explore Data section of the FeederWatch website.

In addition to instructional materials, registered participants receive a subscription to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's quarterly newsletter, BirdScope as well as a summary of results from the prior season each fall.

The Urban Forest Map is a collaborative effort to map every tree in the city of San Francisco. As a citizen forester, you can get involved by searching for trees, verifying records, and by adding the trees in your neighborhood!

Along the way, researchers will use this data to calculate the environmental benefits that the trees are providing -- how many gallons of storm water they are helping to filter, how many pounds of air pollutants they are capturing, how many kilowatt-hours of energy they are conserving, and how many tons of carbon dioxide they are removing from the atmosphere. The information we gather will help urban foresters and city planners to better manage trees in specific areas, track and combat tree pests and diseases, and plan future tree plantings. Climatologists can use it to better understand the effects of urban forests on climates, and students and citizen scientists can use it to learn about the role trees play in the urban ecosystem.

The goal of Urban Forest Map is to provide a one-stop repository for tree data, welcoming information from any agency or group and enabling and celebrating citizen participation. Together, we'll work toward building a complete, dynamic picture of the urban forest.

Archeology Dig started by Louis Leakey to study the origins of Early Man in the Americas. Volunteer on site in the California high desert or process artifacts in the San Bernardino County Museum under the direction of Dr. Dee Schroth, SBCM Curator of Anthropology, and Calico Project Archaeologist.

Whether in a shrub, a tree, or a nest box, bird nests are everywhere. Find one, and you can help scientists study the biology and monitor populations of North America’s birds by joining the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s NestWatch program. Every year, volunteers from across the country visit nests once or twice each week and monitor their progression from incubating eggs to fuzzy chicks to fully feathered adults. They then submit this data to NestWatch where it is compiled and analyzed.

NestWatch helps people of all ages and backgrounds connect with nature. The information that NestWatchers collect allows us to understand the impact that various threats, such as environmental change and habitat destruction, have on breeding birds. Armed with this knowledge, we can take the necessary steps to help birds survive in this changing world.

Six out of 10 people in the US have never seen our Milky Way Galaxy arch across their night sky from where they live. And the problem of light pollution is quickly getting worse. Within a couple of generations in the U.S., only the national parks will have dark enough skies to see the Milky Way.

Too much outdoor lighting not only affects being able to see the stars, but also wastes energy and money, about 2 to 10 billion dollars a year. And it has been shown to cause sleep disorders in people and to disrupt the habits of animals like newly hatched sea turtles that try to find their way back into the ocean but are disoriented by streetlights.

Light pollution may be a global problem, but the solutions are local. To help people “see the light”, an international star-hunting program for students, teachers, and the general public was created called GLOBE at Night. GLOBE at Night is now in its 5th year and is hosted by the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

There are 5 GLOBE at Night campaigns in 2013:
January 3 - 12
January 31 - February 9
March 3 - 12
March 31 - April 9
April 29 - May 8

Through this program, children and adults are encouraged to reconnect with the night sky and learn about light pollution and in doing so, become citizen scientists inspired to protect this natural resource. Teachers like the GLOBE at Night program, because it lends itself to cross-curricular learning: astronomy, geography, history, literature, and writing. The possibilities are great.

Volunteers-In-Parks participants work side-by-side with National Park Service employees to preserve the United States' natural and cultural legacy and to help visitors discover the resources, meanings, and values found in its national parks.

Anyone can be a "VIP": individuals, couples, families, students, and organized groups from all over the United States and the world. Become a VIP and put yourself at the heart of the park experience!

Volunteers-In-Parks participants play an ever-increasing role in national parks through a variety of jobs, including answering visitor questions at an information desk, presenting living history demonstrations in period costumes, building fences, painting buildings, making cabinets, giving guided nature walks and evening campfire programs, assisting with preservation of museum artifacts, maintaining trails, building boardwalks, designing computer programs or park websites, and serving on a bike, horseback, or beach patrol.

National Park Service internships provide learning opportunities through activities such as wilderness re-vegetation, assistance with preservation and restoration projects, water quality monitoring, surveying, educational cave tours, or assisting resource management staff.

Internships offer an interesting and educational experience in some of the most beautiful areas of the country. This is your chance to get actively involved in the stewardship of the United States' national and natural treasures.

Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL) is a citizen science project in which volunteers make and report cloud observations from sites of their choosing, such as a field trip, vacation, or even a backyard. The project aims to collect data on cloud type, height, cover, and related conditions from all over the world. Observations are sent to NASA for comparison to similar information obtained from satellite.

Many people take for granted how powerful clouds are in our atmosphere. It is clouds, in part, that affect the overall temperature and energy balance of the Earth. The more that scientists know about clouds, the more they will know about our Earth as a system. The S'COOL observations help validate satellite data and give a more complete picture of clouds in the atmosphere and their interactions with other parts of the integrated global Earth system. Citizens benefit from their participation in a real-world science experiment and from their access to a variety of background material. Educational materials for teachers are also available.

The National Science Digital Library encourages citizens to help enlarge and strengthen their library of high quality resources and tools that support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.

Developers of content in these subject areas, National Science Foundation grantees, educators and learners, and all other members of the community are welcome to recommend digital resources for the library. These resources include activities, lesson plans, Web sites, simulations, or any materials that help educators meet the demands of an increasingly complex technology-based world.

As a national network of learning environments, resources, and partnerships, the National Science Digital Library seeks to serve a vital role in educational cyberlearning for the nation, meeting the informational and technological needs of educators and learners at all levels.

Global Warming Ambassadors are volunteers trained by the National Wildlife Federation to conduct outreach to the general public through presentations and community events. Ambassadors will describe global warming concepts, how climate change affects wildlife habitat in our country as well as your state, and what people can do on an individual level to confront global warming.

This work will help the National Wildlife Federation educate, inspire, and assist individuals and organizations of diverse cultures in conserving wildlife and other natural resources.

Discover Life is calling all citizen scientists in the DC/Baltimore area to help them map out the distribution of crickets and katydids through the city and suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC. Participants can track the sounds of these insects during the annual Cricket Crawl event held on the evening of Friday, August 24th 2012.

This project is a collaborative venture between Discover Life, The Audubon Naturalist Society, The Natural History Society of Maryland and the USGS

Known as the first and oldest Citizen Science project, at over 112 years, Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count is also one of the largest, with 60,000+ person-days of efforts and more than 60 million birds counted each year. The CBC has contributed greatly to the science of bird conservation with hundreds of publications, including many in important scientific journals. From December 14 through January 5 each year, tens of thousands of volunteers throughout the Americas take part in an adventure that has become a family tradition through the generations.

Count volunteers follow specified routes within a designated 15-mile diameter circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. It’s not just a species tally—all birds are counted all day, giving an indication of the total number of birds in the circle that day. If observers live within a CBC circle, they may arrange in advance to count the birds at their feeders and submit those data to their compiler. All individual CBCs are conducted in the period from December 14 to January 5 (inclusive dates) each season, and each count is conducted in one calendar day (24-hour period).

The Citizen Weather Observer Program is a group of ham radio operators and other private citizens around the country who have volunteered the use of their weather data for education, research, and use by interested parties. There are currently over 8,000 registered members worldwide and over 500 different user organizations. Their weather data are used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and distributed to user organizations.

The Citizen Weather Observer Program is a public-private partnership with three main goals:

1. Collect weather data contributed by citizens
2. Make these data available for weather services and homeland security
3. Provide feedback to the data contributors so that they have the tools to check and improve their data quality.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a voluntary scheme for the recording of archaeological objects found by members of the public. Archaeological objects discovered by the public are commonly referred to as "finds", "small finds" or "portable antiquities." The Scheme was established to promote the recording of chance finds and broaden public awareness of the importance of such objects for understanding our past.

The heart of the organization is its network of "Finds Liaison Officers," who have a role in recording and publishing reported finds, giving advice on finds recording and conservation, giving talks and lectures, and encouraging liaison between members of the public, metal detector users, archaeologists, and museums.

Volunteers record details of their discoveries, including description, weight, relevant measurements, and where and how the objects were found. The Scheme website provides a searchable database with details of over 140,000 finds recorded by volunteers. You can also view some of the many interesting and unusual find that have been recorded so far.

EnvironMentors provides mentors to high school students from under-represented backgrounds for college degree programs in environmental and related science fields. The program matches minority high school students with college and university faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and science and environmental professionals, in one-to-one mentoring relationships. Working together, students and mentors develop rigorous environmental science research projects over the course of the academic year.

In the spring, EnvironMentors students present their projects to elementary school classes in their respective school districts and to a team of judges at each chapter's EnvironMentors Fair. The top three students from each chapter travel to Washington, D.C., to present their project at the National EnvironMentors Fair.

EnvironMentors' integrative approach to identifying pressing environmental issues through hands-on application of the scientific method supported by a mentor has proven beneficial all students and life-changing for some.