Year: 2013

In the height of summer sunbathing, seaside shark sightings universally evoke childhood memories of Jaws, quickly followed by shouts of “Get out of the water!” Yet, fewer than 5 people a year (worldwide) die in shark attacks. Commercial fishing practices and by-catch look set to drive their extinction. Can scientists help save these vital predators? […]

  It’s not always easy for citizen scientists to see what happens with the data they collect. Not all projects are published, and those that are may not be open access and often only include a summary of the findings. I work at F1000Research, and one of the key points of this open access journal […]

That’s right–it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It’s Shark Week, and SciStarter has a slew of projects for you to try out. Let’s see if you bite. Whether it’s fascination or fear, the sight of a shark makes our hearts skip a beat. Thanks to these featured citizen science projects, that sight can also […]

Emerging technologies have a profound effect on how citizen scientists conduct their work. An underwater creature of ancient lineage helps to tell this modern story of technology’s importance to citizen science. Notorynchus cepedianus, the sevengill shark, of the ancient Hexanchidae family (cow sharks), features seven gill slits and a single dorsal fin, giving a prehistoric […]

Think you’re safe in your pools this summer? You better double check! This invasive species has been taking over the mid-Atlantic region of the east coast. Contributor Nick Fordes gives us the scoop. I am always pleasantly surprised by the creativity of new citizen science projects.  Not only are projects using the power of crowdsourcing […]

SciStarter contributors, Lily Bui, Caren Cooper, and Darlene Cavalier, developed this citizen science primer page on SciStarter. Please feel free to suggest additions and edits. We hope this serves as a starting point for anyone thinking about dipping their toes into this exciting and emerging field! The Citizen Science page on SciStarter addresses the following questions […]

SciStarter brings you curated citizen science projects under new themes on a bi-weekly basis. Be sure to check out the other “DNA Barcoding” featured projects for this cycle! Have you ever wanted to know how many different species of creepy crawlies you can spot in a weekend? ‘Biotrailers’ are doing just that at the Mount […]

Here are this week’s featured projects on SciStarter. Interested in learning about more citizen science projects? Try our Project Finder, which connects you to 600+ curated projects around the world! We’ve scanned our database for awesome DNA barcoding citizen science projects! We are all familiar with barcodes, but what do barcodes have to do with […]

Calling all water monitoring groups! It is time for the annual Secchi Dip-In. From now until July 22, volunteer and professional water monitoring groups are being asked to take transparency measurements in a local body of water. A secchi disk is a common tool for measuring water turbidity, or water cloudiness. Turbidity is caused by […]

This is a guest post by Dr. Melinda Hough, PhD in Microbiology from Olympia, WA. Twitter: @theroamingnome SciStarter brings you curated citizen science projects under new themes on a bi-weekly basis. Be sure to check out the  “Building Blocks of Life” featured projects for this cycle! Humans spend more than 3 billion hours playing video […]