Building a Network of Citizen Scientists

By Tim Gallagher

The idea of citizen science—using amateur volunteers to gather data about birds—dates back to the earliest days of the Lab of Ornithology. It was one of the founding principles of this organization and now figures prominently in our mission statement: “To interpret and conserve the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds.” But what is the main purpose of our efforts in citizen science? Do our programs exist to amass large quantities of data about birds across broad geographic areas? Do they serve mostly to educate project participants about the science of bird study? Or does the primary value lie in the army of highly trained volunteers being established across the continent—people who will be ready to help answer new scientific questions and test new hypotheses as they emerge? And what are the ramifications of citizen science for bird conservation?

I pondered these questions recently as I sat in my new office on the second floor of the Johnson Center, gazing out at the trees in Sapsucker Woods. Then, I thought, what better place than here to ask about the purpose and importance of citizen science. Armed with my tape recorder, I walked out my office, turned left, and strolled northward, into the realm of Citizen Science, Conservation Science, and Bird Population Studies. All of these programs are tightly linked in the effort to use volunteers to amass data on birds, as are the Education program (right next door to my office), the Macaulay Library (on the first floor), and the Information Technologies group (perched above me on the mezzanine). Numerous collaborations exist at the Lab, and many come together within the nexus of citizen science. The Education program develops instructional content for our citizen-science projects. The Macaulay Library creates project CDs and cassette tapes, both to teach volunteers the songs and calls of the birds being studied and also to play back at their study sites, where they may elicit a response from a target species. And our Information Technologies group creates interactive web pages that allow project participants to submit and retrieve data from our vast citizen-science database.

One of the first people I passed in the hall was André Dhondt, director of Bird Population Studies. His group analyzes the massive data sets being produced each year by participants in the Lab’s citizen-science projects.

“For me, the primary reason for having citizen-science projects is to collect data, followed closely by the educational value to participants, who learn about the process of science,” says Dhondt. “One of the phenomenal abilities of the citizen-science approach is the ability to collect data across a huge geographic area that has very different climates and habitats.” Instead of having one scientist or a small team of scientists addressing a problem at a handful of study sites, a project might have 1,000 or more trained participants across the continent, each covering several study sites.

“With biology, a lot of times all you need is time, a piece of paper, and a pencil to record data,” says Dhondt. “If you do that in the context of a good set of questions you can really do some exciting work.”

One example he points to is the Lab’s Birds in Forested Landscapes project, which has employed a dedicated group of about 1,000 participants to perform a difficult scientific protocol. The data they gathered have already helped answer some key questions about the habitat needs of forest thrushes, which will be used by the Lab’s Conservation Science program to create a set of conservation guidelines to distribute to land managers across North America. But Dhondt and his staff have also been able to use the data to address other vital questions, going beyond the original scope of the project, such as how acid rain is affecting the breeding success of Wood Thrushes. In addition, he has been using citizen-science data to examine the effects of global warming. “We have so much data—all of North America basically—that we can actually look at where the effects of global warming are and to what extent the effects vary across the continent,” he says.

Ron Rohrbaugh, who heads Citizen Science, was the next program director I encountered. He takes a broad view of the purpose of amateur data collection. “Citizen science sits at a major intersection of science, conservation, and education,” he says. “There are not many other projects where people can contribute data that will be used in real scientific investigations. And participants get to see the whole process from start to finish, from data collection to analysis to results, published in BirdScope or displayed on the Lab’s web site.”

The number of people involved in Lab citizen-science projects is amazing. More than 16,000 participants take part in Project FeederWatch alone. Birds in Forested Landscapes and The Birdhouse Network each have roughly 1,000 participants, and a rapidly increasing number of people take part in eBird, the new web-based bird-monitoring project.

“They’re collecting data to answer broad-scale biological questions,” says Rohrbaugh. “Citizen science has enabled us to accomplish some things that would have been impossible using conventional ecological research methods. For example, in the House Finch Disease Survey, the Bird Population Studies group was able to track the spread of an infectious wildlife disease almost in real time. This is unprecedented.”

Rohrbaugh’s staff is currently developing two new citizen-science projects. The first, dubbed SOS (Study of Overwinter Survival), will attempt to determine the survival rates of birds during the tough winter months and to see how bird feeding affects their survival. This project will be pilot-tested this winter in the Northeast. The Citizen Science staff also wants to establish a Hummingbird Watch. “Very little data exist on the population status or trends of most hummingbird species,” says Rohrbaugh. “They are not well covered by the Breeding Bird Survey or the Christmas Bird Count. FeederWatch is so popular now, we could use a similar protocol for hummingbirds. And because we have 16,000 potential participants in place already across the continent, we are immediately ready to cover an amazingly large geographic area.”

Okay, I can see the value of citizen science as a means of collecting massive quantities of data across broad geographic areas over long periods of time, and I understand how effective it is as an educational tool. But how are these citizen-science data put to use in bird conservation? To find out, I next visited Conservation Science director Ken Rosenberg.

“Our role is to translate the citizen-science data into management guidelines—applying the project results to on-the-ground conservation programs,” says Rosenberg. “We have five years of Birds in Forested Landscapes data from almost 3,000 study sites, and we’re now putting together a set of management guidelines for forest thrushes.”

The Lab has already published management guidelines for tanagers, based on data from Project Tanager, an earlier, highly successful citizen-science effort that studied four species of North American tanagers. The guidelines were sent to corporate forest owners, foresters, and federal and state agencies, and proved to be so popular that they had to be reprinted. The Cerulean Warbler Atlas has also been completed and is currently available on the Lab’s web site. Rosenberg is particularly pleased with how well the Cerulean Warbler Atlas Project succeeded in its goals.

“When we first started looking at Cerulean Warblers, we didn’t even know where they were, how many were out there, and what kinds of habitat they were using,” he says. “In just three years we were able to produce this great atlas covering more than 1,000 sites, with populations identified and mapped in every state. Based on our results, the state of Tennessee just bought 50,000 acres to add to a wildlife management area. And at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in New York, they’re including many acres of forested wetland in their acquisitions that they had previously ignored. These on-the-ground conservation actions are a direct result of our work. Ten years from now, I want to be able to say that our efforts helped stem the decline of the Cerulean Warbler.”

In addition to the United States and Canada, the Lab is exporting the citizen-science concept to Latin America. Eduardo Iñigo-Elias, coordinator of the Neotropical Bird Conservation program at the Lab, is developing a bird-monitoring program in Mexico and Cuba. Currently these countries do not have any formal bird-monitoring programs—not even the Breeding Bird Survey or the Christmas Bird Count. This has created a major data gap, both with migratory birds and year-round resident birds, such as Painted Buntings, which live along the United States and Mexico border. “The role of the Lab of Ornithology in Cuba and Mexico would be to help create a capacity for research so they can engage in bird conservation,” says Iñigo-Elias.

Some citizen-science projects, such as Aves Urbanas, already have a Spanish-language version and are ready-made to export to Latin America. But Iñigo-Elias would like to see eBird, species atlas projects, and other programs introduced there. “We need to determine the relative abundance, distribution, and population trends of the birds in Mexico,” he says. “This is essential before other conservation actions can take place. Then we can move ahead the agenda for creating a strategic plan for bird monitoring and conservation.”

If you’d like to become a citizen scientist, there are Lab projects for every age, every level of expertise, and every location from pristine wilderness areas to densely populated cities. Every issue of our newsletter, BirdScope, contains in-depth features and information about our citizen-science projects. To find out more, visit our web site at www.birds.cornell.edu/citsci or call (800) 254-BIRD and ask for a Citizen Science brochure.

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