The Ecological Society of America’s Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award recognizes long-standing contributions of an individual towards increasing the diversity of future ecologists through mentoring, teaching, or outreach. Gillian Bowser, a research scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) and affiliated faculty with The Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and Department of Ethnic Studies at Colorado…
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Odum Award recipients demonstrate their ability to relate basic ecological principles to human affairs through teaching, outreach, and mentoring activities. Kathleen Weathers is a senior scientist and the G.Evelyn Hutchinson Chair of Ecology at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., where she focuses on freshwater ecosystems. For more than a decade, she has been dedicated to advancing bottom-up…
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Margaret Kosmala, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, shares this Frontiers Focus on assessing data quality in citizen science. Have you ever wanted to do scientific research, even though you have never trained as a scientist? Citizen science gives people with no science background the chance to get involved in…
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Ecological scientists are not known for elevated fashion sensibilities. Many take pride in a sartorial identity rooted in a field work chic of practical hats, cargo pants, and judicious applications of duct tape. Button-downs in botanical prints and ties in tiny repeating motifs of anatomically correct fish are favored formal attire when researchers gather for the Annual Meeting of the…
Datasets from long-running volunteer survey programs, calibrated with data from sporadic intensive monitoring efforts, have allowed ecologists to track the recovery of peregrine falcons in California and evaluate the effectiveness of a predictive model popular in the management of threatened species. In recovery from the deadly legacy of DDT, American peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus anatum) faced new uncertainty in 1992,…
In another great guest post, landscape ecologist Lisa Schulte Moore shares stories of infusing everyday kid activities with a connection to science and nature—and, most importantly, having fun doing it.
If you’ve ever thought that botany doesn’t involve enough time travel, you are not alone. Plant ecologists studying climate change and and the timing of flowering are constantly wondering ‘is this happening when it used to happen?’ My job would be infinitely easier if I had access to a time machine.
Disparate citizen science disciplines come together at the Public Participation in Scientific Research conference by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer The idea of a big, cross-disciplinary meeting had been floating around citizen science circles for a while. Though public participation in scientific research has deep roots in the history of science, in the last few years it has taken off…
Project Budburst: Cherry Blossom Blitz kicks off in the midst of an unusually early bloom. by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer IT’S the first week of spring, and Washington DC’s Tidal Basin is rimmed with snowy petals. Thousands of cherry trees bloom along the water – a week ahead of schedule. Hurried along by a streak of 80 degree (F)…
By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer. RYAN Hueffmeier wants to talk to you about the humble earthworm. Trusty fish bait, friend to schoolchildren, gardeners and composters, the earthworm is no friend to the hardwood forests of the Great Lakes. It is a European invader, and its decomposition services, well known to gardeners, are not helpful to the forest ecosystems that…
By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer A brown pelican, photographed during the 2010 Great Backyard Bird Count by Bob Howdeshell, of Tennessee. Used by permission. ______________________ THIS WEEKEND, as the US celebrated President Washington’s birthday, the National Audubon Society, Bird Studies Canada, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology were celebrating birds, with the fifteenth annual Great Backyard Bird Count. As…
The gathering momentum of *citizen science*. Google searches for the phrase spiked in 2011 (scaled to the average worldwide traffic for the phrase). Credit, Google Trends. CITIZEN science is not an entirely new concept. The Audubon Society’s popular Christmas Bird Count has run continuously for over a hundred years. When the society founded the program in 1900, the concept…