Citizen Science and the North American Bird Phenology Project: Case Study

Jessica Zelt, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, North American Bird Phenology Project

I work for the US Geological Survey at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center and help to manage a citizen science program called the North American Bird Phenology Project. This is a program that was actually one of the first citizen science projects in the United States back in 1881. A teacher in the Mississippi Valley was really interested in bird migration and started getting his friends to start recording that information. That grew into a network throughout North America. At that point they were looking at bird distribution and migration of all migratory birds we see in the United States.

We have taken that dataset that was in storage for about forty years—the original program closed in 1970—and repurposed it to look at phenology and how climate change affects arrival and departure dates of migratory birds. To do that we have scanned all of our records and we have a large network of volunteers who participate with us to transcribe those records. Then the records go through a validation process and are put back out to the public so that anyone from the scientific community can use those records as well as the public themselves.

One of the things that I think is important about this project is that it takes a pretty daunting subject area like climate change and boils it down to something that is very simple and optimistic. We have created a way that volunteers can get involved and see the outcome and impact of their work. When they transcribe they get to see the work that they’ve done and all the work that the other volunteers are doing. They compare and are pretty competitive with each other in trying to get their work done, and they feel like they are invested in the outcome. All of the data, when it’s used in scientific research, which is what we are doing now, is then put back out to the public to share what it is that we’re doing with all of the work they put into it.

This presentation was a part of the workshop Engaging the Public: Best Practices for Crowdsourcing Across the Disciplines. See the full report here.