Citizen Science- Nature's Notebook

Attached you will find a Google Slide presentation that outlines each of my observation days and my findings on each day. Additionally, this presentation answers questions regarding the pre-training and orientation process and my plans for participating in this project beyond this semester. Enjoy! Click here  to view my presentation.

      The user experience of Nature's Notebook is incredibly straightforward and simple to use. This project is advertised or mentioned on several webpages that give citizen science project suggestions. Also, Nature's Notebook comes up easily in a "conservation citizen science" Google search. I was able to find this project through a third party website suggestion. Once you are on the Nature's Notebook website, it is easy to locate the Citizen Science project. Citizen scientists simply have to create an account with iNaturalist and then they can login to their Nature's Notebook "Observation Deck" and begin exploring. Overall, the process is very simple and does not need to be improved in any way.        I do think that this project has a positive effect on conservation. As I mentioned in my last blog post, the data collected from this program has been used in numerous academic journals. Additionally, this data has been used to g...

      When collecting data, citizen scientists have the option of using one of Nature Notebook's observation sheets and entering their data on the website or on the mobile app. Using the observation sheet is optional, but I have found it very useful because it helps to specify what one should look for in their observations. The data that is collected is  submitted to the USA National Phenology Network (USANPN). As mentioned in my first blog post, USANPN runs the Nature's Notebook program. According to their website, the citizen science data is used by researchers, natural resource managers, and others who are interested in conservation in order to make informed decisions and to further scientific discovery (2018). Nature's Notebook is relatively vague in what they use their citizen science observations for, so it is hard to say whether or not they are losing any opportunities with the data they are collecting. However, if it is not already being use...