Become a Scientist, School Not Required

[BridgeTheGap]

For the millions of children who grew up idolizing Jonas Salk, Marie Curie, or Tycho Brahe, but were unable to forge careers in science, there may still be hope. A plethora of citizen-science projects are searching for volunteers and support from scientific-minded amateurs with dreams of helping the earth or discovering the next big breakthrough.

Common Ground magazine offers a nice introduction to citizen-science projects, highlighting work being done by the Collaborative Observatory for Natural Environments (CONE) in Texas, among others. The CONE project allows online birders to snap photos with a robotic web camera to “document the presence of subtropical birds that may be affected by global warming.”

Many citizen science-projects revolve around birding. In fact, the longest ongoing project of this type, the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, was first instituted in 1900. Another birding project, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is at the forefront of the citizen-science movement. One of their many projects, NestWatch (and the newly instituted CamClikr), has citizen scientists peruse archival footage of nesting birds to classify images and avian behavior.

http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Become-a-Scientist-Its-Easy.aspx?blogid=36&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email