Crossing Boundaries

This article highlights some Citizen Science projects that you may want to get involved with personally and/or with your students. Links to websites are provided. There are all sorts of projects for monitoring organisms including but not limited to birds, frogs, fish, ladybugs, plants, even horseshoe crabs!

journalist Fred Pearce reports on how the rapid spread of community-based, digital mapping is helping indigenous groups worldwide to claim ownership of their lands and protect them from logging and other outside development. From the Congo, to Guyana, to the Australian outback, local communities are increasingly using GPS technology and Google Earth to document their traditional forests, hunting areas, burial grounds, and important cultural sites. As Pearce writes, the aim is to produce maps that governments cannot ignore and that can assist local people in saving their homelands

"With soaring human populations and rapid climate change putting unprecedented pressure on species, conservationists must look to innovative strategies - from creating migratory corridors to preserving biodiversity hotspots - if we are to prevent countless animals and plants from heading to extinction."

"The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science. A video course for high school teachers and college level instruction; 13 half-hour video programs, online text, professional development guide, and Web site; graduate credit available"

Become a Member of the Center for Snake Conservation to support snake research, education, and conservation. You will also receive SnakeTalk - the CSC's quarterly newsletter. Join here now!

BILLINGS - The U.S. Forest Service is attempting to grow whitebark pine that are resistant to blister rust as part of an effort to prevent the high-elevation tree from dying out in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

"Deer alone may not threaten any species with extinction but could locally be the straw breaking the camel's back for many songbird populations when acting in concert with other stresses"

Community mapping, a form of citizen science whereby local people participate in geographically defining an area, is increasingly taking on greater significance--especially during times of emergency and natural disaster. Director of the University of California, Santa Barbara's Center for Spatial Studies Michael Goodchild discusses "From Community Mapping to Critical Spatial Thinking: The Changing Face of GIS"

Some GigaPan images are posted on Google Earth, a Google application that allows for close zooming on any area of the earth. Places where GigaPan images are placed allow for clearer, more detailed images than Google Earth itself would display. The images posted on the GigaPan website and Google Earth of places all around the world have made it easier for geology students to experience a variety of fieldwork

The GigaPan process allows users to upload, share, and explore brilliant gigapixel+ panoramas from around the globe. Users can zoom in to explore and collect observational data from these images.

Despite its cumbersome title this wiki is saturated with extensive biodiversity data and information. It also has some stuff for educators at the very bottom of the index column on the right. This wiki "assists data providers and users of biodiversity management to promptly locate through hyperlinks over 200 datasets and services deployed at http://ecotropics.pbworks.com/"

Articles on innovative efforts by Quaker schools to meet environmental challenges. Topics: Teaching, Green Practices, Food, Green Buildings and Spaces, and Service and Action. b

"With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those that have occurred just five times during the past 540 million years."

Butterflies and Moths of North America is an ambitious effort to collect, store, and share species information and occurrence data. Access species profiles, interactive distribution maps, and photographs by browsing checklists or taxonomy pages, or by searching for a species of interest.

The Russian-English Agricultural Atlas is the world's most comprehensive source of information on the geographic distribution of plant-based agriculture in Russia and neighboring countries. The Atlas contains 1500 maps that illustrate the distribution of 100 crops, 560 wild crop relatives, 640 diseases, pests and weeds, and 200 environmental parameters. Additionally, the Atlas provides detailed biological descriptions, illustrations, metadata and reference lists. Currently, individual maps can be downloaded and viewed using freely available AgroAtlas GIS Utility software, which can also be downloaded at this site.

Using mobile devices, citizen scientists collaborate to document species around the world. Imagine a field guide for every organism!

Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.

"We are the world's first web channel dedicated entirely to discussions of global climate change effects, causes and the future of the climate change treaty. A team of UK web editors and international journalists and cameramen follow the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol throughout the year and around the world. We provide commentary and context from key players from all the major international climate change meetings. Content includes exclusive interviews with world leaders, expert observers, decision-makers, activists, and many of the most important and influential figures involved in the debate."

Satellite imagery matching game for middle and high school students.

"In this activity, undergraduate students use Google Earth to investigate a variety of renewable energy sources and select sites within the United States that would be appropriate for projects based on those sources. These sources include solar energy, bioenergy, hydroelectricity, tidal power, wind energy, wave energy, and geothermal energy."

"In this activity, undergraduate students learn to use satellite and aerial imagery, maps, graphs, spreadsheets, descriptive information, and statistics to compare energy and oil consumption rates between states in the United States and among various countries. They also use this information to explain these differences, as well as differences in categories of consumption, such as domestic, transportation, industrial, and commercial use. They are also asked for opinions regarding what measures countries should take toward reducing oil consumption. "