Food

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.

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.

The project is organized by the Trumpeter Swan Society: http://www.trumpeterswansociety.org.

Beach WAtchers are volunteers dedicated to protecting Puget Sound through research, education and stewardship. Get 100 hours of university caliber training and craft a volunteer experience to give back 100 hours over two years.

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!

TuAnalyze is an application for recording and sharing measures of your diabetes. The application allows those touched by diabetes to track, share and compare their health information. Contributions will help advance diabetes care and public health response.

TuAnalyze is available to any TuDiabetes community member. The application supports sharing of diabetes information throughout the community and feedback of community-level diabetes information to users.

You can learn more about your diabetes by viewing information on your TuAnalyze app in the My Apps section of your profile. You can compare personal measures of your diabetes to community measures on the TuAnalyze map.

The TuAnalyze app is jointly developed by Children's Hospital Boston and TuDiabetes.org.

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 Camas Citizen Science Monitoring Program seeks to engage high school volunteers in the long-term scientific monitoring of camas lily populations in the Weippe Prairie site of Nez Perce National Historical Park. Students are trained in the classroom and then spend time in the field using data collection techniques specifically designed for this program. Results of the monitoring effort are available to National Park Service managers so that they can make better management decisions based on sound, scientific information.

Camas is an important cultural and natural resource. For the last 7,000 years, camas has been an important part of the Nez Perce history, life and culture, as well as those of many other tribes of the Pacific Northwest. In addition, camas is one of a suite of wetland species associated with seasonal wet prairie ecosystems. However, as a result of recent agricultural conversion, irrigation, flood control, and other land use practices, remaining wet prairies in this region have been drastically reduced. Projected climate change will also impact these wet prairie ecosystems and monitoring camas populations will provide the National Park Service an opportunity to track climate change impacts on park natural resources.

Monitoring of camas and invasive weeds is a unique opportunity to integrate natural resource monitoring with the cultural history of the Nez Perce people. Citizen scientists will use carefully designed scientific procedures and modern technology to collect data, such as the number of camas plants and flowering plants and the presence of invasive species. Components of the program are tied to state science standards, and high school students will work alongside ecologists, statisticians, natural resource managers, and interpretive rangers.

Three local high schools are currently participating each year. This is a unique learning opportunity that students are sure to remember.

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.

This year, the annual event takes place March 3-16, each night from 8-10pm, when there will be no Moon and the constellation, Orion, will be visible to naked eyes from almost any location on Earth. Everyone around the world is invited to participate.

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.

By some estimates less than five percent of the world’s species of fungi are known to science. While things are slightly better for the large fleshy fungi known as mushrooms, it is still a common experience to come across a mushroom that cannot be easily identified in the available books or which doesn’t really fit the definition of any recognized species. This site is intended to address that gap by creating a place for us to talk about and record what we’ve found, as well as connect to the existing literature about mushrooms.

Please do not feel intimidated by the scientific bent of the site. Everyone is welcome to dive in and add their own mushroom observations, upload mushroom photos and make comments on other people’s observations.

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.

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

The Great Sunflower Project uses data collected by citizen scientists to produce the first real map of the state of the bees. Some bee populations have experienced severe declines that may affect food production. However, nobody has ever measured how much pollination is happening over a region, much less a continent, so there is little information about how a decline in the bee population can influence gardens.

The Great Sunflower Project makes it easy to gather this information. Plant a seed or two, spend 30 minutes watching your flowers twice a month, and send in your data. Plant, Watch, Type. That's it. And, who doesn't like sunflowers?!

Related Material: http://www.sciencecheerleader.com/2009/03/uncovering_the_secret_lives_of_bees/