Citizen science, sometimes called community science, is where people can help scientists in their work by taking measurements, observing the weather or simply just reporting on particular natural features.
Environmental science relies on thousands of recordings of natural events over time. Climate change modelling to predict global heating for example, relies on historical measures of temperature. In many cases these critical datasets on which the models are built, were recorded by a non-scientist recording the temperature and weather every day for years.
At The Carbon Community, we believe in connecting together trees, and science, and people. By getting involved in volunteering activities, you are helping to conduct primary research critical to our understanding of the world around us. But it also is incredibly rewarding personally.
The environmental crisis feels so big, for many it’s hard to know how you can personally make a difference. But by getting involved, you can get a great sense of personal fulfilment that you are doing your bit, and making a difference. You’ll likely also to learn new techniques, learn how to use scientific instruments and get a better understanding of what leading environmental scientists are working on and why. You’ll likely also meet interesting people, and get outside in the fresh air, connecting with nature.
At The Carbon Community we are gearing up for a big citizen science project to catalogue 6,400 individual trees as part of our landmark carbon sequestration study in Wales neat the Brecon Beacons. We cannot do it without the help of volunteers, and it is critical to the scientific study to track these trees over time. In fact, without it there isn’t a study at all. We also plan to make the data set freely available, which will help other scientists to build on this work and leverage the data in other scientific studies.
Even if you are unable to get to Wales as part of this exciting new project, all volunteers are welcome from all locations, and there are many different and equally rewarding volunteering activities you can get involved in.
Whether or not you get involved with citizen science at The Carbon Community is entirely up to you – we’d love your help and support – but above all we’d encourage you to get involved with any citizen science projects from any of the environmental and scientific institutions.
