What is civic science?

The term "civic science" is used to designate scientific projects that use laymen as volunteers. Civic science involves people and interest in the science and the natural world, and it also helps scientists, allowing them to start studying a very large range and create a large amount of data to work with. Many organizations sponsor ongoing or annual civic scientific projects such as the Christmas number of Birds of Audubon Society, and information about these projects is usually easily accessible on their website and their offices, for people who are interested. For scientists, civic science can greatly expand the scope of the study without being expensive. For example, birds using volunteers can cover the whole North America in a few weeks when it is well organized, at the cost of coordination of organizers and distribution of the tmaterials they need. Paying scientists for performing the same survey would be very expensive and it would be difficult to study because the number of people in the fieldwould be limited.

For citizens, citizens' science can be fun and sometimes quite interesting. Many volunteers participate in civil science because they are interested and enthusiastic about the environment and like the idea that they are able to help with scientific research. Civic science also gives them the opportunity to connect with other volunteers and scientists in the field. For example, annual bird surveys can attract people of all ages who enjoy performances for several hours and notes about what they see.

In addition to the involvement of field work, civic science can also take place closer to home. For example, many universities have programs monitoring buds and leaves that call on local gardeners to present data from their gardens and birds' backyards and wildlife observers can also contribute data from their observation to civic scientific projects. Inside the house is a distributed computer technology in the form of a citizenThe science that uses computer idle time to process information using thousands of computers scattered around the world.

If you are interested in contributing to the Citizen Science project, you should start by identifying the topic of interest. For example, if you consider native plants interesting, contact a local company of a native plant company and ask if you can participate in a survey or identification session. You can also decide to explore something completely new by contacting a natural organization such as Audubon Society or The Nature Conservance and offer your help from a citizen.