Citizen Science Summer School 2018
Zuzanna is participating in Citizen Science Summer School 2018, organized by Vienna Doctoral Studies, from University of Vienna.
The course is taking place in picturesque, mountainous village Grunau im Amtal, there are around 30 participants from around the world – Ph.D. students, postdocs, data analysts, NGOs, and many more.
As half of the course is behind me, I would like to share the key aspects of the programme:
- origin of Citizen Science
For the first time, the term citizen science was used in an article about ufology in New Scientist in 1979, then in 1989 on water quality project in the USA. Already in 1992, one of the first, nationwide projects started – NestWatch, supervised by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, still continued.
- how to design CS project ( important – although citizen science sounds like a great volume of data collected in a cost-effective way – it is a load of work! )
- CS apps in Austria: Roadkill (observations of animals killed on the roads) and BOKUArion (project about invasive slug in Austria – Spanish slug)
- visit at Konrad Lorenz Research Station and Amtal Wildlife Park, were we get familiar about projects: habitat use of northern bald ibis (there is an app WaldrApp) and behavior of greylag geese, monitoring the time-space use of greylag geese, ravens and northern bald ibises (Forschen im Amtal App)
- ongoing CS projects on, for example:
eBird – 3 mln users globally, now more than 100 publications from eBird datasets!
Celebrate Urban Birds, NestWatch, FeederWatch, iRecord Butterfly, iRecord Ladybird
- financing and technical background of the project.
The summer school lasts till Friday, so still a lot to learn :)
