March 2nd, 2007
monitoring projects
Yesterday, I wrote that I’d try to put together a small list of nature monitoring projects that some of you might find of interest. We had something of a minor snowstorm here this morning, so I spent a couple of hours looking around the net to see what I could dig up. This is a list of projects that tweaked my own interest. I’ve participated in a couple of them in the past, and am intending to give at least 2 or 3 more of them a try this year — most likely the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, and the Ontario Turtle Tally, and as mentioned in my comments to yesterday’s post, I’m checking into doing a couple of Marsh Monitoring Program sites somewhere close to home.
My criteria for the list was that most of the projects should be “independent” projects where one can learn to do without taking a training workshop, and then input data online — although there are probably a couple of exceptions to that rule. Most are free of charge for participation, but a few do charge for materials fees (the Monarch Watch tagging program being one I can think of offhand). I didn’t check to make sure each project is active in 2007, but it seemed that most are. As you’ll see, the list is heavily weighted to Canadian programs, but I did include some U.S. and even one from the U.K. I encourage any of you to send along links to programs you know of — anywhere in the world, for that matter, as a lot of people from all over the place read this blog.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think it’s pretty neat that there is such a selection of monitoring programs for a wide range of flora and fauna. I find that rather encouraging as it seems to me that there wouldn’t be so many projects if there was little interest.
By the way, to make it easy to find the list again in future, I’ve given it a page of its own, and you’ll see its tab up at the top of this blog’s banner – it reads “citizen science”. Just click on that tab to get to the page in future.