Maine Policy Review Fall 2017

Fall 2017 · Vol. 26, No. 2 · $15

Maine Policy Review

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Maine Policy Review

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PUBLISHER MARGARET CHASE SMITH POLICY CENTER Jonathan Rubin, Director

EDITORIAL STAFF

Maine Policy Review (ISSN 1064-2587) publishes

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

independent, peer-reviewed analyses of public policy issues relevant to Maine.

Linda Silka Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The journal is published two times per year by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. The material published within does not necessarily reflect the views of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

EDITOR Barbara Harrity Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The majority of articles appearing in Maine Policy Review are written by Maine citizens, many of whom are readers of the journal. The journal encourages the submission of manuscripts concerning relevant public policy issues of the day or in response to articles already published in the journal. Prospective authors are urged to contact the journal at the address below for a copy of the guidelines for submission or see the journal’s website, http://digitalcommons.library .umaine.edu/mpr/.

PRODUCTION Beth Goodnight Goodnight Design

DEVELOPMENT Eva McLaughlin Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

COVER ILLUSTRATION Robert Shetterly

PRINTING University of Maine Printing Services

For permission to quote and/or otherwise reproduce articles, please contact the journal at the address below.

Current and back issues of the journal are available at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/ The editorial staff of Maine Policy Review welcome your views about issues presented in this journal.

Please address your letter to the editor to:

Maine Policy Review

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784

207-581-4133 • fax: 207-581-1266 http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu mpr@maine.edu

The University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgender status and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. Please contact the Director, Equal Opportunity, 101 N. Stevens Hall, Orono, ME 04469 at 207-581-1226 (voice), TTY 711 (Maine Relay System), equal.opportunity@maine .edu with questions or concerns.

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My Creed . . . is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly.

It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought.

Margaret Chase Smith

THANKS TO… Contributors

Sanford Blitz Merton G. Henry

Peter and Nancy Mills and anonymous Contributors

Peter Bowman John Clark Stanley R. Howe, Ph.D. James P. Melcher

Kenneth Palmer Douglas Rooks Elizabeth W. Saxl Howard P. Segal

Friends

David Vail and anonymous Friends

Volume 26 of Maine Policy Review is funded, in part, by the supporters listed above. We encourage you to consider making a tax-deductible contributions to show your support for the journal. Checks should be made payable to the University of Maine and can be mailed to the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, 5784 York Complex, Bldg. 4, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5784. Donations by credit card may be made through our secure website at digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr and by clicking “Donate.” Information regarding corporate, foundation, or individual support is available by contacting the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. If you would like receive email updates about future issues of MPR, please send an email to mpr@maine.edu and we will add your address to our electronic mailing list.

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Contents

Special Issue: Citizen Science F E AT U R E S Introduction

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Complexities of Counting Fish: Engaging Citizen Scientists in Fish Monitoring

by Karen H. Bieluch, Theodore V. Willis, Jason Smith, and Karen A. Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

by Esperanza Stancioff, Beth Bisson, Sara Randall, Jessica Muhlin, Caitlin McDonough, and Susan Gallo . . . . .

Citizen Science and Maine’s Fishermen: An Enlightened Approach to the Search for Ecological Solutions

Citizen Science and Wildlife Conservation: Lessons from 34 Years of the Maine Loon Count 7

by Ted Ames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

REFLECTIONS Cutting-Edge Citizen Science in the Desert and at a Museum

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

THANKS TO OUR REVIEWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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by Sally Stockwell and Susan Gallo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Community-based Strategies for Strengthening Science and Influencing Policy: Vernal Pool Initiatives in Maine

by Jessica S. Jansujwicz and Aram Calhoun . . . . . . . . . . .

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Documenting the Diversity, Distribution, and Status of Maine Bumble Bees: The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas and Citizen Scientists

by Kalyn Bickerman-Martens, Beth Swartz, Ron Butler, and Frank Drummond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Collecting Data on Charismatic Mini-Fauna: Public Participation and the Dragonfly Mercury Project

by Colleen Flanagan Pritz and Sarah J. Nelson . . . . . . . . .

Next Generation Citizen Science Using Anecdata.org 50

Design Principles of Online Learning Communities in Citizen Science

Citizen Science in High School

A View from the Edge: A Teacher’s Perspective on Citizen Science

by Ed Lindsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Interview with Old Town High School Student Emma Hargreaves

by Ed Lindsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Will the Adoption of Science Standards Push Maine Schools Away from Authentic Science?

by Bill Zoellick and Jennifer Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Citizen Science for Maine’s Classrooms: The Case for Improving STEM Learning

by Jane Disney, Duncan Bailey, Anna Farrell, and Ashley Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by Ruth Kermish-Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Citizen Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge—Values of Inclusion in the Wabanaki Youth Science Program Reflections on the Strong Growth of Citizen Science: An Interview with Abe Miller-Rushing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Citizen Science in a Maine Middle School Classroom

by Rhonda Tate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Citizen Science Book Resources

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Power of Place in Citizen Science

by Bridie McGreavy with Greg Newman, Mark Chandler, Malin Clyde, Muki Haklay, Heidi Ballard, Steven Gray, Russel Scarpino, Rita Hauptfield, David Mellor, and John Gallo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Commentary

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Commentary

by Christine Voyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Commentary

by tish carr and Darren Ranco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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INTRODUCTION

Introduction

by Linda Silka

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e are pleased to bring you this issue on citizen science in Maine. Citizen science is rapidly growing around the world, and Maine is a leader in this expanding approach to science. As you will see from the diverse articles included in this issue, citizen science is advancing the study of problems of central importance to Maine: • What is happening to our wildlife?

• How is the timing of our seasons changing?

• What kinds of contamination may be harming our landscapes?

• Can citizen science help us locate landscape features that are small in scale but large in impact?

Citizen science produces more than just data; it offers a broad range of opportunities for strengthening education at all levels, from grade school through graduate school. Citizen science also increases opportunities for lifelong learning.

As is apparent from reading these articles, citizen science is not without its challenges. A key challenge will be to ensure diversity in those who become involved in citizen science, which will call for better understanding of the barriers to participation. As citizen science moves toward greater use of technology, how do we ensure that those without familiarity with such technology aren’t inadvertently excluded? How do we ensure that citizen science opportunities do not exclude people who live in remote or rural areas? How do we draw on the knowledge of New Mainers or people who do not have much free time?

Exciting as the current topics being investigated through citizen science are, many other topics remain that could be investigated in this way. As reflected in the issue’s articles, much of the current citizen science work in Maine focuses on conservation-related topics. Many other problems, such as those in the health arena, may also lend themselves to citizen science approaches; we see this in the vivid examples from Arizona and Colorado discussed in the issue. These examples show how the reach of citizen science might be expanded as we seek a broader range of scientific approaches to assist in addressing our pressing problems.

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And policy impacts. Some of the articles explore the problem of how research approached through citizen science might better inform policy. Are there points in the policy development process where the availability of research findings is especially important? Is the involvement of particular groups of citizen scientists important for increasing impacts on policy? Do we have an adequate understanding of the conditions under which science influences policy? Do we understand how policy is promulgated in different arenas? Do we understand how science needs to be done to maximize its impacts on policy? What quality controls must be in place for citizen science to be considered reliable enough to be used for policy? Citizen science raises a range of questions and points to enhanced opportunities for science to make a difference.

It seems that one cannot pick up a newspaper these days without encountering stories about citizen science.

We read about citizen scientists who have kept extensive long-term records of the water quality of lakes where their families have had homes for generations. We read of citizen scientists studying river herring. We read about citizen scientists studying Maine’s ancient midden piles. Maine is a state with many assets and issues, and the opportunities in citizen science to address them are enormous and growing. As Ruth Kermish-Allen notes in her article, citizen science is about building bridges between community, science, and action. All the articles in this special issue of Maine Policy Review help us think about these important issues. Linda Silka is the executive editor of Maine Policy Review. A social and community psychologist by training, Silka was formerly director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. In addition to her role with MPR, she is a senior fellow at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

Citizen Science and Maine’s Fishermen: An Enlightened Approach to the Search for Ecological Solutions

by Ted Ames

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s a retired commercial fisherman— in addition to being a researcher and volunteer—I have a particular interest in how the shoreside world perceives fishermen, especially because we are often portrayed as frustrated antagonists of management and oppositional to “enviros.” Fishermen’s participation in science, however, has the potential to change that perception. Are fishermen volunteering to participate in studies affecting their fisheries for the common good? What are the obstacles to their participation in citizen science, particularly when it could provide important information on how to improve their own fisheries? How might their participation in science provide valuable insights into the marine world in a changing climate?

Citizen science is often defined as science done by ordinary people who often work for, or with the help of, scientists to answer real-world questions. This potentially large source of labor has become increasingly important to scientists and regulators as they struggle to fund and staff projects dealing with environmental issues. Because the need for volunteers is so great, the federal government and state of Maine have developed policies for attracting interested citizens to help with relevant studies.

Some researchers and agencies actively solicit interested individuals to participate. Topics vary from health and social services to astronomy and numerous environmental studies.

Volunteers are the extra hands and eyes that collect samples, monitor projects, and restore degraded habitats. Timely MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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monitoring by volunteers in environmental studies, for example, has allowed identification of air pollutants and noncompliant sewage discharges into aquatic and marine systems in coastal Maine. However, volunteers are often not limited to these activities. In an analysis of recruitment and retention of citizen volunteers, West and Pateman (2016) listed the potential activities of volunteers as including project design, hypothesis formation, processing, distributing data, and communications.

Perhaps the most distinguishing features of volunteers, however, are that they are unpaid, and of their own free will, are engaging in projects for outcomes that benefit others.

OBSTACLES TO CITIZEN SCIENCE IN COMMERCIAL FISHERIES

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t first glance, it seems obvious to link fishermen volunteers with scientists working to understand marine and aquatic systems and develop sustainable fisheries, creating unique opportunities for both. Scientists require vessel platforms and intimate information about the areas and species they wish to study, while fishermen have sturdy, seaworthy boats and know the areas they fish like their backyards. Researchers are trained to study the dynamics controlling their fishery’s productivity, but have limited time and resources to conduct extensive field studies. Seasonal survey cruises aboard dedicated research vessels provide one tool, but ship time is expensive and sampling is inherently limited to brief periods and relatively few sites,

leaving large gaps. Fishermen know little about early life stages of the species they encounter, or the processes affecting their abundance, but they do know where the adults and larger juveniles of their target species are found at different times of year and their boats make ideal work platforms.

However, coastal commercial fishermen differ from most citizen volunteers in two important ways that helps explain the challenges posed to them by this type of citizen science. Most citizen volunteers are indulging in a hobby, expressing their concern about an issue, or simply curious about a subject area quite removed from their expertise or actual employment. In contrast, day-boat fishermen, such as Maine lobstermen, are working when they are on the water. Any research activity that differs from their normal fishing routine carries an opportunity cost that cannot be recovered: in fact, the income from a lost day of fishing is gone forever.

Collaborative research, as it’s called on the water, requires such things as meshing the fisherman’s schedule with the shoreside availability of researchers.

Research activities interfere with the rhythm and location of fishing. The second difference is that fishermen make their living based on their knowledge of the marine environment where they fish, so the information they are sharing with scientists is inherently proprietary.

Although they may want to help out, the specter of having to share information directly related to their livelihood is threatening and makes many fishermen reluctant to get involved. Knowledge is a 7

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

tool of their trade in a competitive business. Today, as electronics have made idiosyncratic knowledge less valuable, this issue has become less of an absolute barrier to collaboration.

EMERGENCE AND IMPORTANCE

Increase in the number of commercial fishermen who volunteer to work with scientists is linked to dramatic changes occurring in the ecosystems and a growing awareness by both groups that their collaboration holds promise for more sustainable fisheries and important learning about how future trends may affect fisheries. The results of projects where commercial fishermen have already collaborated with scientists are impressive.

For several decades, Atlantic herring distribution along the Maine coast has been studied using fishermen participation to better coordinate spawning closures with fishing practices to ensure a future fishery for herring while maintaining adequate prey abundance for other species.

In the 1990s, Maine lobstermen initiated a voluntary one-week count of all egg-bearing females caught in their traps. They were frustrated by a federal management regime that insisted that Maine’s regulations were ineffective at providing reproduction in the fishery based on an assessment model that predicted the imminent collapse of Maine’s lobster fishery. The number of gravid females counted was huge, and the effort resulted in the development of a new assessment model for Maine that recognized the fishery was healthy.

Additionally, Maine’s management regulations were found to be so effective that other states adopted them.

Alewife harvesters throughout the state have joined with hunters, anglers, wildlife enthusiasts, and environmentalists to work on state and federal efforts to reopen river access for alewives and MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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other anadromous fish that spawn in freshwater but spend their lives at sea.

Local volunteers collect scale samples from alewives and count fish, a major twice-a-day commitment that is part of the science of reopening harvestable runs and ensuring access for other species.

Twenty-five years ago in an effort to save their fishery from collapse, Maine’s retired highliner coastal fishermen, who historically targeted cod and haddock, voluntarily identified sites where they had previously caught ripe (close to spawning) cod and haddock. As a result, Maine fishermen successfully supported legislation to close groundfish fishing in state waters during spawning season.

These efforts contributing to ecologically sound fisheries are what I often refer to as fishermen stewardship because their participation not only helps their particular fishery, but also enhances species diversity by facilitating the recovery of additional species.

Ted Ames is a founding board member of Penobscot East Resource Center. He fished commercially for 28 years and was vice-chair of Maine Department of Marine Resources Hatchery Technology Committee, executive director of the Maine Gillnetters Association, and director of Alden-Ames Lab. He has authored several peerreviewed articles on historical fisheries ecology, fishermen’s ecological knowledge, and related subjects. Ames was named as a MacArthur Fellow in 2005.

OPPORTUNITY

We are now in a time when coastal ecosystems are changing unpredictably.

Many of the old research approaches that depended on relatively predictable ecological patterns are less useful. If we are able to set conditions to successfully engage fishermen in ongoing citizen science, we will have a cadre of observers who can provide science with invaluable, fine-scale observations in real time that not only can help sustain fisheries in uncertain times, but can also provide insights into the ocean environment that is so vital to the planet. This is a vision worth working toward. REFERENCES West, Sarah, and Rachel Pateman. 2016.

“Recruiting and Retaining Participants in Citizen Science: What Can Be Learned from the Volunteering Literature?”

Citizen Science: Theory and Practice 1(2): 15. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.8

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The Complexities of Counting Fish: Engaging Citizen Scientists in Fish Monitoring

by Karen H. Bieluch, Theodore V. Willis, Jason Smith, and Karen A. Wilson

the public to interact with a highly migratory marine species. No boat is required to find river herring, just Data gathered by citizen scientists can help ecologists understand long-term trends good timing and a keen eye, making and can improve the quality and quantity of data about a resource. In Maine and Massathem an exception among marine chusetts, numerous citizen science programs collect data on river herring, anadromous fish.

Atlantic salmon are probably fish that migrate each spring from the ocean to spawn in rivers and lakes. In collaborathe only marine fish that penetion with state and local resource managers and academic institutions, these programs trate farther inland, but they are aim to protect and restore river herring, improve local watersheds, and in some cases, far rarer: 510 salmon migrated to support commercial harvesting. To better understand how programs are run and how Milford Dam in Milford, Maine, in data are used by managers, we interviewed program coordinators and resource manag2017, compared to 1,256,061 river ers. Interviews revealed that resource managers consider citizen science–generated herring (MDMR 2017b). river herring data in decision making, but that their concerns about data quality affect Although the fishery appears to if and how data are used. Although not without challenges, standardizing monitoring be strong and improving, two decades ago the future was not as approaches could improve data collection and use. We offer six considerations related certain.

Starting in the 1970s, landto standardization for managers. ings of river herring saw precipitous declines (NMFS 2013: 48946), and by the 1990s, river herring fisheries INTRODUCTION in Maine were in dire straits. However, local-level conservation, restoration, and monitoring efforts, grassach spring millions of sleek, silvery fish called river roots conservation partnerships involving citizen scienherring migrate from the ocean to spawn in rivers tists, and aggressive and collaborative actions by resource and lakes along the Eastern Seaboard from Canada to manager have helped the river herring fishery to the Carolinas to Florida. In 2015, Maine fisheries biolorebound. Still, river herring fisheries are spread over a gists estimated that over 4 million river herring migrated wide area, and understaffed state agencies cannot track to our inland waters (MDMR unpublished data), and all populations. harvesters in our local communities brought 1,295,998 Natural resource–focused collaborative projects, pounds of river herring to market, valued at $415,433 such as those occurring in Maine’s river herring fishery, (MDMR 2017a). Impressive numbers for a fishery require that different types of knowledge about a that is local in nature and pursuit. River herring— resource be employed in the research process. Successfully alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) and, in Maine, the combining local ecological knowledge (i.e., harvester less common blueback herring (Alosa aestivalis)—are knowledge) with scientific knowledge promotes partneranadromous, meaning they spawn in freshwater and ships, builds community consensus, strengthens social grow up in salt water, returning every spring to learning, and fosters trust (Berkes 2009). Collaborative crowd streams and rivers from Kittery to Calais. Their research may play a critical role in developing sustainspawning behavior makes them an easily harvested, able and widely accepted management practices. It not and thus vulnerable, fishery, but also a spectacle for only increases the quality and quantity of data (Johnson the public. River herring penetrate well inland, more and van Densen 2007), but also increases the research than 100 miles inland in some places (e.g., Sebasticook collaborative’s ability to respond to changing circumLake) and provide an unprecedented opportunity for stances (Trachtenberg and Focht 2005).

Abstract

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ENGAGING CITIZEN SCIENTISTS IN FISH MONITORING

Data generated from citizen scientists can help ecologists understand long-term trends at local and global scales (Miller-Rushing, Primack, and Bonney 2012), and involving citizen scientists in research provides a means for engaging the public in and educating them about scientific research and their environment (Dickinson et al. 2012). We find support for these literature findings in many of the river herring– monitoring programs that incorporate citizen scientists.

Citizen scientists help resource managers understand where river herring are migrating and in what numbers, and they encourage other local citizens to become educated about, and stewards of, their local resources.

The most successful citizen science programs, such as the Christmas Bird Count, which evolved into eBird hosted out of Cornell University, the Bird Ecology program at the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, and the Maine Brook Trout Survey program led by Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), provide qualitative data that guide state officials in focusing their efforts on more detailed investigations.

Predetermined parameters (e.g., count vs presence-absence) and data verification at multiple levels (program or volunteer coordinators followed by resource managers) are hallmarks of successful programs that contribute to natural resource decisions.

In this article, which summarizes interviews with citizen science program managers, citizen scientists, and resource managers, we will discuss how citizen science

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monitoring contributes to river herring sustainability, the inherent challenges involved with a noncentralized effort, and strategies for standardizing monitoring across diverse programs to improve data collection for decision making.

BACKGROUND

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aine has a long history of collaboration between stakeholders of river herring runs and resource managers. River herring–harvest rights are awarded to municipalities by Maine Department of Marine Resources (MDMR). At the municipal level, management responsibilities fall to fish committees, composed of elected selectpersons, fish wardens, and community volunteers, who guide decisions about which harvester to hire, frequency and magnitude of the harvest, and conservation and maintenance measures for the season (e.g., clearing beaver dams or improvements to the harvest site). Harvest contracts are awarded by the towns, usually by bid, for anywhere from one to five years. To operate and remain open to harvesting, municipalities and the state must collect fishery-dependent and -independent data (ASMFC 2009). Fisheries-dependent data are collected from commercial and recreational fishermen, while independent monitoring programs are typically random samples collected by, for example, state fisheries biologists. Power companies also provide count data from traps in fishways at dams (e.g., MDMR 2013). Citizen scientist–generated data have been used as independent monitoring data to open or requalify harvest sites closed under Amendment 2 (ASMFC 2009). Maine requires towns to report catches and collect fish scales for age determination. Towns submit annual harvest plans to MDMR in collaboration with the harvester, which are approved or returned with recommendations for improvement.

The availability of data can be critical in the management of river herring harvests, and collaborative research is critical for collecting these data. For example, 10

ENGAGING CITIZEN SCIENTISTS IN FISH MONITORING

through monitoring the St. Croix River run, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO), the St. Croix Waterway Commission, was able to demonstrate the effects habitat openings and closures had on the river herring population there. The data were used to trigger legislative action, changing how river herring were being managed by the state of Maine (Willis 2009).

Damariscotta Mills is another example of how an NGO collecting independent monitoring data influenced restoration strategies and restoration success.

Damariscotta Mills has the longest continuous harvest record of any run in the state. The NewcastleNobleboro Fish Committee (in charge of Damariscotta Mills) is large and active, with a strong volunteer pool that helps with activities such as festivals, fundraising, and construction, but not fish counting. A 1989 scientific inquiry by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) found that the Damariscotta Mills harvest was overfished (Crecco 1999). The fish committee closed the run in 1993 for a period of seven years, choosing a local management action more stringent than state or federal regulations at the time (Spencer 2009). The counting program, which was unique at the time, provided count data paid for by the hydropower dam owner (per provisions in the hydropower license agreement) to trigger the closure. The successful reopening of harvests and changed legislation demonstrates the importance of gathering local data in empowering communities to influence the fate of their resources.

There are also important collaborations for collecting fishery-independent data at smaller, less wellfunded runs. In Maine and Massachusetts, numerous citizen science programs are collecting valuable data on river herring and leading river restoration efforts, in close collaboration with local, academic, and state institutions. The River Herring Network ties together river herring runs in the North Shore region of Massachusetts, providing a coordinator of coordinators to work with state agencies and organize training and informational events. In Maine, citizen science–monitoring efforts are assisting individual municipalities and MDMR with assessing the river herring fishery. For example, the citizen science–monitoring program in the town of Pembroke, in collaboration with organizations such as Maine SeaGrant, is collecting data with the hope of reopening their commercial harvest.

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Fisheries (MDMF) developed guidelines for collecting high-quality data across years (Nelson 2006). The guide sought to codify a sampling frequency and calculation methods used to generate estimates of river herring passage by comparing methods being used at the time.

Although not entirely accessible to a layperson, the recommended basic method provides an estimate of passage with confidence intervals.

To apply the monitoring protocol, citizen scientists typically stand at the top of a fish ladder, or at a passage constriction in the stream, to count fish. The recommendation was to split the day into six segments to cover a twelve-hour migration period. Volunteers conduct one ten-minute count of river herring migrating to their spawning habitat during each segment, and the data are extrapolated to estimate potential passage.

Other data, including water or air temperature (if equipment is available), help explain sudden changes in the number of fish passing because water temperature directly affects river herring migration.

River herring are an ideal marine resource to monitor through citizen science….

River herring are an ideal marine resource to monitor through citizen science for several reasons.

Runs of river herring often occur in streams that flow through people’s backyards; one can almost touch the fish as they migrate; and the water in New England, especially Maine, is often clear enough that citizens can count fish with a repeatable level of accuracy (RootesMurdy, Kipp, and Drew 2016). Perhaps just as importantly, because these fish return to the lakes and streams in which they were hatched within three to four years, efforts of citizen scientists positively affect their fish.

Such characteristics squarely establish these as community runs that connect communities to the resource and creates abundant educational opportunities. Still, developing and implementing a statewide standardized program has many challenges. Understanding these challenges and developing strategies for overcoming them is critical to enabling managers to use local data for larger-scale decision making.

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METHODS

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o better understand how programs are run, why people are engaging in citizen science counts, and what managers are looking for when they consider using the data for management decisions, we conducted a multiyear study in Maine and Massachusetts of volunteer, coordinator, and manager perceptions of the citizen science process and outcomes. We used a mixedmethods study design, including individual interviews with volunteer coordinators of river herring–monitoring programs and state, regional, and federal managers, a survey of citizen scientists involved in monitoring programs in Maine and Massachusetts, and participant observation at multiple runs and at river herring– related meetings (e.g., Maine Fishermen’s Forum, River Herring Network annual meeting). Researchers at the University of Southern Maine (authors Smith, Willis, and Wilson) also initiated and continue to coordinate a citizen science–based river herring count at Highland Lake in Windham, Maine.

We conducted individual or small-group interviews in person or over the phone in 2014 and 2015. In total, we interviewed 19 volunteer coordinators of river herring–monitoring programs in Maine and Massachusetts (Bieluch, Smith, and Willis 2015), and nine interviews with fisheries managers (ME—two; MA—three; NH—one; NOAA—two; ASMFC—one) (Smith, Bieluch, and Willis 2015a). We were not aware of any volunteer monitoring coordinators in New Hampshire. With the exception of one interview during which we experienced a technology malfunction, we digitally recorded and transcribed all face-to-face interviews verbatim. We also typed extensive notes during phone interviews.

Interview with volunteer coordinators followed and were informed by 30 interviews with river herring harvesters, municipal officials, managers and scientists, restoration leaders, and board members of the Alewife Harvesters of Maine (AHM). Bieluch in collaboration with AHM conducted the interviews as part of AHM’s organizational-visioning process (Bieluch and AHM Board of Directors 2014). In addition, the interviews followed three focus groups conducted in 2013 with citizens and local managers involved in the river herring industry in Maine; the focus groups were coordinated by researchers from the University of New Hampshire and members of the AHM Board (Cournane and Glass 2014).

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Project researchers used qualitative data analysis software to analyze interview data. We first looked for information that supported key study themes (e.g., the way in which data are being used in decision making).

After sorting the data according to those themes, we reviewed them for additional subthemes (e.g., how individual relationships influence one’s trust in the data).

After sorting the data according to major themes and subthemes, we analyzed the data again to determine what it told us about citizen science river herring–monitoring programs, the data they collected, and the use of these data in decision making at multiple scales.

In addition, we conducted an online survey of 176 citizen scientists involved in river herring–monitoring programs in Maine and Massachusetts between December 2014 and January 2015 (Smith, Bieluch, and Willis 2015b). Project researchers worked with volunteer coordinators for each site to distribute a survey invitation to their volunteer monitors via email.

FINDINGS

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nterviews revealed that whether citizen science– generated river herring data are considered in decision making depends on project scale and the research question(s) being asked. Three state officials mentioned citizen science–generated data is used in regional trend analyses, and two state officials indicated that some volunteer river herring–count data can be considered in coast-wide assessments. Data are also used in concert with other data collected by state biologists; for example, volunteer counts can be combined with counts by state agencies using electronic counters, video-monitoring equipment, or trap counts, and with biological metrics such as scale samples. Interannual data provide feedback to volunteer groups by helping people understand if their restoration efforts are contributing to increasing fish numbers. At the organizational scale, data may be used to measure the effect of restoration efforts (e.g., culvert replacements or fish ladder renovations), and at the local and state scale, count data contribute to determining if a run is sustainable and whether it should be conserved or harvested. Presence-absence assessments of river herring contributes to interwatershed assessments across regions. As stated earlier, regional-scale data may be used as a relative index for comparing between watersheds.

Although data are used for decision making, interviews with managers indicated that the quality of citizen 12

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science data can be a concern. State officials tend to base their trust in citizen science data on volunteers’ adherence to a specific data-collection protocol, and trust is often assessed on a “case-by-case basis,” as one state official stated. Another state official said, “I think that there is value in volunteer data, and there might be some caveats with it, but it can probably be used for something.” Officials noted that factors that decrease data quality include inefficacy of the current statistical design backing sample-collection protocols, a lack of adherence to the prescribed protocol, poor data diversity, such as counts not being fully reported, or when programs report skewed counts due to data collection occurring primarily during one segment of the fish run (beginning, middle, or end). Lack of commitment of volunteer monitors to continue consistent long-term counts at a site was another factor that decreased the quality of data.

It is difficult to assess the health of a river herring run based on one or two years of data.

Coordinators also expressed some concerns with data quality and usability. For example, participants identified conditions that may affect count accuracy, such as poor weather, high numbers of fish passing at once, volunteers choosing not to count or not taking the count seriously. In addition, coordinators noted that some volunteers needed help distinguishing river herring from other fish. Thus, some coordinators sent comparison pictures out to their volunteer pool to help people accurately identify river herring. Several coordinators also expressed concerns with the robustness of the data for drawing conclusions. One coordinator said that the data quality was low, especially for trend analysis, but that it was better than no data. Another explained that there was not enough data at the run to draw any conclusions about it, and another individual noted concerns with the assumptions made in the Nelson model to estimate run sizes. Concerns with the data were not universal. Some coordinators did not express any concerns with the quality of the data or thought they had a quality dataset. Interestingly, a few coordinators indicated they use, or will use, video-monitoring equipment to complement and check volunteer counts.

Key Challenges to Standardization of Data Collection

The physical attributes of the counting site also influence a program’s ability to collect accurate data.

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correct number and accurately identifying the type of fish). The absence or presence of a dam with a fish ladder strongly affects counting efficacy; without a dam, observers must find or create a constriction to count effectively. Fish tend to swim in schools and may be anywhere in the channel, so they are easy to miss or double count. In contrast, streams with dams concentrate fish through a single, narrow passage point and delay some fish, thinning out schools and making counting easier. Ironically, dams are the premiere limiting factor affecting most anadromous fish populations (Brown et al. 2013). The turbidity, or cloudiness, of the water affects visibility, as does water flow; on highflow days, turbidity is higher, the water is deeper and faster, and visibility decreases. A white background helps create contrast to increase fish visibility. One program coordinator purchased polarized sunglasses to help volunteers see the fish.

A second challenge is the volunteer pool and its ability to collect consistent data over time. For the data to be useful, managers need it collected consistently across volunteers and comparable among years. Missing data or time slots that go unfilled or uncounted require estimating the number of fish that passed during that period, which introduces error into the final count. If too many count slots or time periods go uncounted, managers had lower confidence in the data. Similarly, confidence is affected if the data-collection methods (e.g., length of the count period per volunteer) used are not consistent between years and similar between sites.

Lag time between data collection and use by managers is common because most volunteers hand write their findings on a paper data sheet or in a notebook, which means that program coordinators or resource managers spend time entering data. Finally, participation frequency and skill level of the volunteers establishes the accuracy and thoroughness of the count. Encouragingly, our volunteer survey results show participation frequency per volunteer is more than once per river herring–migration season, which may provide the level of commitment necessary to successfully implement standardized approaches: 81 percent of respondents counted more than once a month, 66 percent participated more than one year, and 91 percent planned to participate the following year.

A third challenge we discovered is that individual monitoring programs vary in their goals, and this variance may affect the quality and consistency of the data.

Program goals matter because they influence participants’ 13

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and program organizers’ (dis)incentives for collecting sufficiently detailed data for management and sharing those data with local and state managers. For example, some programs are monitoring to demonstrate run sustainability to continue harvesting. These programs only need to demonstrate that enough fish passed upstream to meet a set escapement, but they have a strong incentive to share those data with managers because the data are required for the run to stay open.

Conversely, a watershed organization actively restoring a stream may need to demonstrate impact of funding through increasing run counts (total fish counted) over a number of years, but these organizations may not have an incentive to share those data with the state. More resources may be available to municipally sponsored or harvester programs, whereas watershed organizations may be entirely dependent upon volunteers. Short-term vs long-term funding also affect program duration. For example, community-based grant-funded efforts tend to stop when the funding ends, whereas municipal or harvester efforts tend to be longer term and built into the municipal budget. Although some of these challenges—such as the physical properties of the run— cannot be easily changed, programs can implement some strategies to help standardize data collection and strengthen data quality.

program capacity. For example, a state official noted, “I do not think that a standardized monitoring approach would be superior to a set of guidelines,” and “for each of those methods, I think that having standardized protocols would be good.” Another state official was generally supportive of method standardization, but argued that there are some caveats to consider, such as the availability of volunteer counters to fill the counts and the site-specific configurations relative to the surrounding environment. There are mixed, if generally positive, feelings towards mandating a standard counting protocol because of the diversity of counting situations.

Steps to Accomplish Standardization In contrast to the grassroots nature of volunteer river herring monitoring in New England, some officials were of the opinion that standardized monitoring would only occur if the effort came from the regional or federal level. When asked how to implement a standardized protocol along the whole East Coast, one state official

Standardization of Monitoring Methods Although the goals and volunteer pool of the various river herring–monitoring programs vary, standardization across programs may be beneficial to the fishery as a whole. Standardization would not only ensure that the data collected across runs and among states is consistent enough to be used for regional analyses, but also would provide an opportunity to develop training protocols useful for any group starting a monitoring program. Our interviewees offered several insights on the opportunities and needs for standardization.

One state official said, “Absolutely, a standardized protocol reduces error …[and] the overall confidence you have, if you know that each site is being sampled exactly the same, then it is easier to compare those things.” This was echoed by another state official who said that an advantage to standardization is that the “more groups do counts, and they are all doing them the same way, theoretically we should be able to compare those over a larger area.” These quotes indicate general support for standardization, but others stressed the need for some flexibility to accommodate site differences and MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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said, “when you go state to state to state, they all have their own way of doing things.” Thus, some state officials recognized their limited ability to control other state’s monitoring methods. It seems likely that coastwide standardization would require support and supervision from a regional or federal organization. When asked to describe some of the next steps to standardize a protocol, another official stated: a lot of them [steps] would have to be coordinated through the technical committee and the technical expert working group. They would identify what are the primary areas of research and management needs [and] the information should be disseminated through the representatives who are on the technical committee for when they go back to their respective states and say this is what needs to be done.

Yet others see working at the site level as the key to consistent, comparable data, but the costs in terms of direct involvement and time would be high. The official stated, “you would have to meet with your volunteer base, and your harvester, and explain to them, ideally all of them would be in the same place, and then show them [how to follow the standardized protocol].”

Other officials indicated that a regional strategy for monitoring could only occur after conducting state-bystate comparisons of existing protocols, presumably to determine if there are median methods that touch on any situation.

Strides Towards Standardization The theme of simplicity came up several times during the interviews with program coordinators, and we mention it here as a tool for improving and standardizing data collection. Coordinators offered several suggestions for creating a simple process for volunteers:

• Keep the counting process bomb-proof simple by having a simple protocol, leaving the equipment at a central location (preferably on-site at the count), and by using simple sign-up tools, such as Google Docs.

• Organize the counting site in an accessible location.

• Take structural steps to help simplify counting, such as putting white sandbags or a whiteboard at the counting site to increase the visibility of fish for volunteers.

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Further, coordinators discussed the need to train volunteers on the importance of data quality, the factors that affect it, and importantly, that even counts of zero fish are important data points in the dataset.

Technology can assist with counting and monitoring standardization in multiple ways, keeping in mind the goal of one count per counting period as specified in Nelson (2006). Through our experiments with various counting methods at Highland Lake in Windham, we found that a hybrid volunteer-video system worked best. The volunteer pool in Windham has proven insufficient to cover the entire alewife run.

We recruited volunteers as usual to make counts, but at the same time, we recorded underwater video of fish passage. At the end of the season, we identified time slots that were skipped and used a paid staffer to observe video to fill in those slots. The video also allowed us to evaluate the accuracy of counts by frequent volunteers; that is, the staffer recounted a small percentage of the periods counted by the frequent volunteers and reported to those volunteers on their accuracy.

River herring play a role in Maine’s economy and culture.

These methods were codified in a Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP—Appendix 1) in 2017. The QAPP, a document reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a requirement of receiving EPA funding, sets out guidelines for count structure, quality-control check of volunteer activities, and disposition of the data. In the case of Highland Lake, the data are released to a local land trust and an EPA-sponsored National Estuary Program, Casco Bay Estuary Partnership, for archiving.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

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iver herring play a role in Maine’s economy and culture. Tourists visit Maine to see river herring runs, and fishermen use river herring for lobster bait.

Eagles, osprey, mink and seals are attracted to river herring runs for feeding, which draw other tourists to 15

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the region to view those wildlife. Additionally, river herring are a symbol of healthy lakes and streams (EPA 2012), and they are an upstream connection between the ocean and freshwater ecosystems (Ames and Lichter 2013; Willis, Wilson, and Johnson 2017).

Although our interviewees professed a need for standardized counting methods, the nature of river herring significantly complicates standardization efforts. River herring are elusive, evolved to be invisible to predators from above, and tend to travel in numbers difficult to enumerate. Schools of fish arrive at irregular intervals, further complicating counts. Every counting situation is different, even in northern New England where the streams are relatively small, small dams are widespread, the water is relatively clear, and volunteers are widely available. Yet, our research documents steps we can take to strengthen monitoring toward standardization. The following are six considerations for standardizing river herring monitoring in Maine: • The protocol must be specific enough to be adoptable by any type of community.

• The protocol must be flexible enough to accommodate site-specific and state-specific conditions.

• The protocol must collect information that can be gathered any time a volunteer is on-site, even when fish are not running, to help volunteers stay engaged. This engagement is critical for retention.

• Volunteers and program coordinators need to understand the protocol and how data are being used for decision making to help ensure data accuracy.

• Coordinators and state and regional managers need to communicate with each other at least biannually to discuss the protocol and how it’s working and to review data collection and determine how they can be used.

• The protocol must be approved by state managers and regional committees.

It is critical for this type of review that there are program coordinators who would also help implement any standardized strategy or protocol. In general, developing a network and establishing forums in which resource managers, municipal agents, program coordinators, and volunteers can share information and strategies for management of the program may improve consistency among programs and spur innovation.

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Further, these networks may strengthen relationships, leading to improved trust in the data.

The potential participation of citizen scientists in the development of standardized methods will further deepen citizen involvement in the management of an ecologically and economically significant resource.

Having a trained and experienced group of citizen scientists with transferrable scientific skills and familiarity with the processes and requirements of environmental monitoring programs will better equip the management infrastructure to monitor future changes in the environment. Citizen scientists can be an effective extension of professionals, covering areas much larger than a professional staff can at a fraction of the cost and complementing monitoring technology. Effectively deployed citizen scientists are a triage tool that help focus limited resources on the most pressing environmental problems and help engage individuals and communities in resource stewardship and local management. Citizen science programs related to the river herring industry offer a glimpse of both the challenges of statewide standardization and of the possible solutions to these challenges. Further, they demonstrate the importance of collaborative resource management, where citizens, fishermen and fisherwomen, municipal agents, and state and regional managers work together to contribute unique insights and to gather data to inform decision making at multiple scales.

River herring monitoring has a differing policy history in the Northeast, with Maine and Massachusetts in particular using volunteer counts to different degrees and for different purposes. Managers at the national, regional, and state levels recognize the variation in methodology between sites as a limitation to the wide application of volunteer counts, but also recognize that flexibility in methods is necessary to achieve any counts.

The local knowledge and stewardship of river herring by citizens, harvesters, and municipal agents is critical for effectively shepherding this resource. Ultimately, managers need a tool that uses the data and knowledge generated by volunteer counts to predict or inform sustainable harvest calculations. The investment in the development of standardized river herring–counting and –monitoring methods is an important step in managing river herring fisheries. -

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to volunteer coordinators, citizen scientists, harvesters, and state and federal managers for their time and insights. Thank you also to Alewife Harvesters of Maine, Association for the Protection of Cape Cod, and the Maine Department of Marine Resources for their support and networking help. Thank you to Linda Silka (UMaine) for her guidance and Laura Lindenfeld (Stony Brook University) for her time. This research was supported by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, grant 0104.13.036938, Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine, National Science Foundation award EPS-0904155 and Maine EPSCoR at the University of Maine.

REFERENCES ASMFC (Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission) and Shad and River Herring Development Team. 2009.

Amendment 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Shad and River Herring. ASMFC, Hanover, NH. Ames, Edward P., and John Lichter. 2013. “Gadids and Alewives: Structure within Complexity in the Gulf of Maine.” Fisheries Research 141:70–78.

Berkes, Fikret. 2009. “Evolution of Co-management: Role of Knowledge Generation, Bridging Organizations and Social Learning.” Journal of Environmental Management 90:1692–1702. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman .2008.12.001 Bieluch, Karen H., and AHM Board of Directors. 2014.

“Planning a Future for Maine’s Alewife Fisheries: Outreach and Interviews with Local Stakeholders.”

Technical report submitted to Alewife Harvesters of Maine, Dresden, ME. Bieluch, Karen H., Jason Smith, and Theodore Willis. 2015.

Coordinating Volunteer River Herring Monitoring Programs in Maine and Massachusetts: Operations, Strategies and Recommendations. University of Southern Maine final report to National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (Grant No.: 36938). USM, Portland, Maine. http://www.nfwf.org/archive/Documents /coordinating-volunteer-river-herring-monitoring -programs-me-ma.pdf Bonney, Rick, Caren B. Cooper, Janis Dickinson, Steve Kelling, Tina Phillips, Kenneth V. Rosenberg, and Jennifer Shirk. 2009. “Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy.” BioScience 59:977–984. doi:10.1525 /bio.2009.59.11.9 Brown, J. Jed, Karin E. Limburg, John R. Waldman, Kurt Stephenson, Edward P. Glenn, Francis Juanes, and Adrian Jordaan. 2013. “Fish and Hydropower on the US Atlantic Coast: Failed Fisheries Policies from Half-Way Technologies.” Conservation Letters 6:280–286. DOI: 10.1111/conl.12000

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Crecco, Victor (Shad and River Herring Stock Assessment Subcommittee). 1999. Fishery Management Report No. 35 of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission: Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Shad & River Herring. Government Printing Office, Washington DC. Cournane, Jamie, and Christopher Glass. 2014. Summary of Maine Alewife Harvesters Focus Groups, January 2013. Northeast Consortium Technical Report. http:// www.northeastconsortium.org/pdfs/140322_Summary _Alewife_Focus_Groups_FINAL.pdf Dickinson, Janis L., Jennifer Shirk, David Bonter, Rick Bonney, Rhiannon L. Crain, Jason Martin, Tina Phillips, and Karen Purcell. 2012. “The Current State of Citizen Science as a Tool for Ecological Research and Public Engagement.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10(6): 291–297. DOI: 10.1890/110236 Johnson, Teresa R., and Wim L.T. van Densen. 2007.

“Benefits and Organization of Cooperative Research for Fisheries Management.” ICES Journal of Marine Science 64(4): 834–840. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093 /icesjms/fsm014 MDMR (Maine Department of Marine Resources).

2017a. 2012–2016 Landings by Species Report.

MDMR, Augusta. http://www.maine.gov/dmr /commercial-fishing/landings/documents /12-16LandingsBySpeciesWithBonus.Table.pdf MDMR (Maine Department of Marine Resources). 2017b.

Department of Marine Resources Trap Count Data for 2017. MDMR, Augusta. http://www.maine.gov/dmr /science-research/searun/programs/trapcounts.html MDMR (Maine Department of Marine Resources). 2013.

Kennebec River Anadromous Fish Restoration Annual Progress Report—2012. MDMR, Bureau of Sea-Run Fisheries and Habitat, Augusta.

Miller-Rushing, Abraham, Richard Primack, and Rick Bonney. 2012. “The History of Public Participation in Ecological Research.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10(6): 285–290. DOI: 10.1890/110278 Nelson, Gary A. 2006. A Guide to Statistical Sampling for the Estimation of River Herring Run Size Using Visual Counts. Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries Technical Report TR-25, Gloucester. http://www.mass .gov/eea/docs/dfg/dmf/publications/tr-25.pdf NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service). 2013.

Endangered Species Act Listing Determination for Alewife and Blueback Herring. Federal Register 78:48944–48994.

Rootes-Murdy, Kirby, Jeff Kipp, and Katie Drew. 2016.

Report on the River Herring Data Collection Standardization Workshop. Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. http://www.asmfc.org/uploads /file/56fc3c6dRH_DataCollectionStandardizaition WorkshopSummary_March2016.pdf

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Smith, Jason, Karen H. Bieluch, and Theodore Willis. 2015a.

State, Regional, and Federal Managers’ Perspectives on Citizen Science Programs: Data Use, Data Needs, and Management Decisions. University of Southern Maine final report to National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (Grant No.: 36938). USM, Portland. http://www.nfwf .org/archive/Documents/state-regional-federal -managers-perspectives-citizen-science-programs.pdf Smith, Jason, Karen H. Bieluch, and Theodore Willis. 2015b.

Understanding Citizen Scientists’ Participation in the Experiences with River Herring Monitoring Programs in Maine and Massachusetts, United States. University of Southern Maine final report to National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (Grant No.: 36938). USM, Portland. http://www.nfwf.org/archive/Documents /understanding-citizen-scientists-and-river-herring.pdf Spencer, Erin E. 2009. “Factors Controlling Alewife (Alosa psuedoharengus) Population Abundance among Four Rivers in Mid-Coast Maine.” Master’s thesis, University of Maine. Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1453. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/1453 USEPA (US Environmental Protection Agency). 2012.

“Correspondence with Maine Attorney General Schneider.” USEPA, Region 1 Office. Boston. http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files /RiverherringEPAfinding.pdf Trachtenberg, Zev, and Will Focht. 2005. “Legitimacy and Watershed Collaborations: The Role of Public Participation.” In Swimming Upstream: Collaborative Approaches to Watershed Management, edited by Paul A. Sabatier, Will Focht, Mark Lubell, et al., 53–82. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Willis, Theodore V. 2009. “How Policy, Politics, and Science Shaped a 25-Year Conflict over Alewife in the St. Croix River, New Brunswick-Maine.” In Challenges for Diadromous Fishes in a Dynamic Global Environment, edited by A. Haro, K. L. Smith, R. A. Rulifson, et al., 793–811. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda.

Willis, Theodore V., Karen A. Wilson, and Beverly J. Johnson. 2017. “Diets and Stable Isotope Derived Food Web Structure of Fishes from the Inshore Gulf of Maine.” Estuaries and Coasts 40(3): 889–904. DOI: 10.1007/s12237-016-0187-9

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Karen Bieluch is the practice-based learning specialist for the Environmental Studies Program (ENVS) at Dartmouth College, where she helps integrate community-based work into ENVS academics. Her research examines community-university partnerships, citizen science, environmental communication and behavior, and place and community identity.

Theodore “Theo” Willis is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine.

His research examines the biological and social effects of diadromous fish, including how current and historical abundances of anadromous fish shape bioeconomic systems and drive decisionmakers to conserve or exploit fish.

Jason Smith is a consultant.

His research interests include the social aspects volunteer-based ecological monitoring, marketing and business management, and sustainable materials management.

Karen Wilson is an aquatic ecologist in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine where she teaches courses with an aquatic bent, and conducts research on ecosystem effects of anadromous fish. She has worked with several volunteer groups who have started volunteer counts of alewifespawning runs.

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Signs of the Seasons: A New England Phenology Program

by Esperanza Stancioff, Beth Bisson, Sara Randall, Jessica Muhlin, Caitlin McDonough, and Susan Gallo

citizen scientists. Phenological events—such as bird and amphibian As global climate records continue to break, average New England air temperature calls, reproduction, and migration, increases are among the highest in the continental United States, and sea surface and unfolding leaves or flowering and fruit ripening—are easy to temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have increased faster than 99 percent of the rest monitor, and many people already of the world’s oceans. Little is known about how marine and upland biota respond to enjoy observing these changes in these environmental changes. Citizen science is being used to document and compare their own communities as the current phenology (the timing of life cycle events) for individual species with historiseasons turn. cally documented relationships between temperature changes and the onset of particThe University of Maine ular phenophases, such as leafout or gamete release. Signs of the Seasons (SOS) is Cooperative Extension and Maine a citizen science–driven phenology-monitoring program in northern New England that Sea Grant developed the Signs of observes 19 upland and coastal indicator species and was developed by University of the Seasons (SOS) phenologyMaine Cooperative Extension, Maine Sea Grant, and partnering research scientists. This monitoring program in 2010, in article provides an overview of SOS structure, research partnerships, lessons learned, partnership with an advisory challenges, and next steps. committee of climate scientists, educators, and biologists from academic institutions, state and limate change is accepted as one of the most federal agencies, and nonprofit organizations throughout urgent threats to humanity and Earth’s ecosystems Maine. The program was conceived to address two main (IPCC 2014; NASA 2017; World Economic Forum objectives: 2017). Scientists, policymakers, and citizens have never • Filling the critical need for phenology data to been more essential to addressing the multitude of characterize the biological effects of climate climate-related challenges. To understand and address change. these challenges requires vast quantities of information • Empowering citizens to become part of the collected across space and time, as well as a sea change response, and ultimately, solutions to climate in understanding, attitudes, and engagement across the change through the program, by increasing political spectrum and in every community—large and their climate literacy, engaging in participatory small, rural and urban. research, and sharing their knowledge and expeSince individual researchers and institutions have riences with others. limited human and financial resources to collect climate data, citizen science can be used to advance and support In this article, we provide an overview of the scienthe work of professional climate scientists by producing tific context for focusing on phenology and a summary large quantities of geographically dispersed data over of the program structure, accomplishments, and lessons many years. Citizen science can also help engage and learned to date. Profiles of several research collaboraenergize people of all ages in understanding, generating, tions illustrate how we have been able to leverage invaluusing, and acting upon sound climate science. able expertise, catalyze participant engagement, and Phenology, the study of the timing of seasonal extend our impacts. biological changes, is perfectly suited to engaging Abstract

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THE ROLE OF PHENOLOGY IN UNDERSTANDING OUR CHANGING CLIMATE

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henology has emerged as one of the most important indicators of climate change. Indeed, the climate research community considers it as “the simplest process in which to track changes in the ecology of species in response to climate change” (IPCC 2007).

Warming temperatures affect the timing and intensity of the seasons. In the United States and particularly in the Northeast, winter is the fastest-warming season, (Fernandez et al. 2015; Tebaldi, Adams-Smith, and Kenward 2017). Warm winters mean that spring begins earlier. The onset of spring has advanced by two to five days per decade over the past thirty years (IPCC 2007).

These changes are altering the phenology of species and ecological relationships and processes around the world (IPCC 2014; Miller-Rushing et al. 2010). For example, migratory North American birds are failing to keep pace with the earlier green-up of vegetation in spring, when their young insect prey emerges (Mayor et al. 2017).

Understanding such changes in phenology and ecological relationships are crucial for assessing the effects of climate change (Primack et al. 2009). Yet, because individual species change in different ways and at different rates, the effects are challenging to predict.

For centuries, farmers, fishermen, foresters, hunters, and gardeners in Maine and beyond have been collecting and using phenology data to optimize their planting, harvesting, and hunting. Historical records of these data can be found in drawers, attics, and museums throughout the state, and even today, most professionals who work the woods, waters, and fields still keep such records.

Phenology influences cultural events such as Maine Maple Sunday and blueberry festivals. It also affects public health management such as tracking the occurrence and spread of tick-borne illnesses and the seasonal activities of their mammalian hosts.

Signs of the Seasons Structure and Partnerships

In 2009, the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN, www.usanpn.org) was formally initiated as a consortium of individuals and organizations that work on different observational scales to collect, share, and use phenology-related data and information. USA-NPN developed and oversees Nature’s Notebook, a publicly accessible, national database to store long-term records of these observations. A record 2.4 million data entries were submitted in 2016.

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Developed in 2010, Signs of the Seasons was one of the USA-NPN’s earliest partner programs. Drawing upon more than three decades of experience developing and coordinating citizen science and environmental monitoring programs in Maine, UMaine Cooperative Extension and Maine Sea Grant developed a structure and approach in partnership with a 10-member advisory committee of researchers, educators, and outreach professionals working throughout Maine. In 2013, the program expanded to New Hampshire through a longstanding partnership with New Hampshire Sea Grant and Cooperative Extension.

Signs of the Seasons uses standard USA-NPN protocols to train volunteers to collect and enter their data directly to Nature’s Notebook. Participants complete a 2.5-hour training with an introduction to relevant climate and phenology science and hands-on practice observing 19 indicator species. The indicator species were selected for their climate sensitivity, their economic and cultural importance, and their accessibility, as they are all easily identified and ubiquitous across the region. Once trained, SOS volunteers independently observe and record the phenology in their backyards, parks, schoolyards, and other public spaces.

Signs of the Seasons includes unique protocols and online data management for rockweed, Ascophyllum

SIGNS OF THE SEASONS PARTNERS AND ADVISORS Acadia National Park Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Maine Audubon Maine Maritime Academy New Hampshire Sea Grant Schoodic Institute University of Maine scientists and educators University of Maine Climate Change Institute University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension US Fish and Wildlife Service USA National Phenology Network

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nodosum, a dominant species of seaweed found on sheltered intertidal shores in the North Atlantic.

In addition to our relationship with USA-NPN, we work closely with scientists at institutions throughout the region who use SOS data in their own research and with organizations with complementary missions and programmatic activities and strong networks of volunteers, such as Maine Audubon, Acadia National Park, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, and UMaine Cooperative Extension’s 4-H and Master Gardener programs. Working with our research and outreach partners, we provide technical support and field opportunities for volunteers, as well as science seminars, webinars, and updates on the contributions of SOS data to climate and phenology science in the Northeast and to national initiatives led by USA-NPN. Following is a profile of three such partnerships, each focused on different species.

Wading into Intertidal Phenology with a Coastal Monitoring Program

Climate-related impacts on terrestrial ecosystems are more extensively documented than impacts on marine ecosystems and coastal processes (Rosenzweig et al. 2008). Given Maine’s economic and cultural dependence on marine resources and working waterfronts, and indications that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than more than 99 percent of the global ocean (Pershing

Participants in the rockweed-monitoring project.

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et al. 2015), there is a great need for more information.

Signs of the Seasons developed a coastal phenology-monitoring effort to help document biological responses to these temperature changes, with an initial focus on rockweed, Ascophyllum nodosum, ubiquitous along rocky shorelines in the region. Ascophyllum nodosum reproductive phases begin as water temperatures warm in spring and are easily recognized. A longterm record of the onset of A. nodosum reproductive phases will help researchers understand how shifts in ocean temperature influence its reproduction, with potential for broader effects in nearshore marine ecosystems given A. nodosum’s role as a foundational species.

Working with Jessica Muhlin, associate professor of marine biology at the Corning School of Ocean Studies, Maine Maritime Academy, we developed three protocols for tracking A. nodosum phenology, growth rates, and associated water quality parameters. SOS data contribute to Muhlin’s broader research questions about how A. nodosum growth and reproduction influence nearshore marine ecosystems in a changing climate.

Investigating Climate-related Threats to the Common Loon

Perhaps no other bird species is as closely associated with the state of Maine as the common loon, Gavia immer. For 34 years, Maine Audubon Loon Count volunteers have tracked loon presence and abundance on lakes and ponds (see Stockwell and Gallo this issue). This study, led by Susan Gallo, wildlife biologist with Maine Audubon, has documented increasing populations of adult loons, but numbers of loon chicks have remained low.

Loons are especially vulnerable to climate-related stressors because they are heat intolerant and they take seven years to reach sexual maturity. Increased intensity and duration of rainfall events can wash away loon nests, and they may be susceptible to increased insect outbreaks and expanding diseases, which are also caused by warming temperatures and earlier onset of spring. In 2015, SOS and Maine Audubon developed a partnership to augment the loon count data 21

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with phenology observations of loon breeding activities and appearance and growth of chicks throughout spring and summer months. In 2016, SOS worked with the USA-NPN to incorporate loon chick phenophases— distinct events in life cycles of plants or animals with start and end points—into the Nature’s Notebook database to increase uniformity and accuracy of observations.

Signs of the Seasons data are used by collaborating scientists and partners, including those just profiled, as well as by Acadia National Park, and through national and regional USA-NPN studies focused on phenology of hardwood forests, lilacs, and onset of spring.

USA-NPN data, to which SOS contributes, have been cited in 63 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Uncovering the Past through Maine’s Historic Phenology Data

Lessons Learned, Challenges, and Next Steps

Renowned natural historians including Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold created detailed scientific catalogs of plant flowering dates and other phenology observations. Historical records of annual first flowers, first leaves, and first migratory bird arrivals can serve as baselines for researching the effects of climate change on biota and biological processes. In his journals for the Oxbow region of northern Maine, hunting guide L. S. Quackenbush recorded daily observations of first flowering, leaf out, and migratory bird arrival dates. Caitlin McDonough, David H. Smith Conservation Biology Fellow at the University of Maine, has been conducting research to compare past and current records of the Oxbow region, working with scientists at the University of Maine at Presque Isle.

Along with meeting presentations and a webinar, McDonough cohosted a phenology hike with SOS on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, another of her research areas, providing an opportunity to introduce SOS participants to the value of linking historical records with the current-day observations they are making as citizen scientists.

SOS Program Impacts Participant response to the program has been strong. From 2011 to 2016, 248 volunteers contributed 216,681 terrestrial and freshwater aquatic phenology records to Nature’s Notebook, and from 2014 to 2016, 61 coastal volunteers contributed 13,314 records on A. nodosum phenology, growth, and water quality to the SOS Coastal Observers database. Results from SOS annual survey of volunteers illustrate progress toward the program’s climate literacy and engagement goals, as nearly three-quarters of respondents have reported increased understanding of climate change science, which they attribute to their involvement in the program.

Nearly half (45.5 percent) have said that their involvement with Signs of the Seasons has made them more likely to take action(s) to address climate change.

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We gauge our success and recalibrate our approaches based on annual formal participant evaluations and feedback from trainings, webinars, and conferences. Given Maine’s strong stewardship ethic, the most important lesson we have learned is the immediate and long-term value of leveraging existing state, regional, and national networks to develop mutually beneficial, durable partnerships that advance common research, outreach, and education goals. This cannot be overemphasized. We plan to extend these efforts by developing new research partnerships and volunteer networks focused on monitoring phenology of Maine’s valuable agricultural, wild-harvested, and other ecologically important species, such as lowbush blueberry, sugar maple, and amphibians.

In addition to generating useful data and providing field research experiences for participants, these partnerships offer learning opportunities and feedback that citizen scientists need to inform and motivate their efforts. The partnerships also foster collaboration and social connections between citizen scientists and research partners.

At the national scale, our role as a partner organization and local leader of the USA-NPN allows us to draw upon the resources, expertise, and data infrastructure they provide and to share our own best practices and receive input from other practitioners across the network.

Signs of the Seasons participates in national and regional meetings of the USA-NPN, and in 2016, SOS helped reinvigorate and formalize the Northeast Regional Phenology Network through coordination of a two-day conference attended by leading phenology scientists, educators, and science communication professionals throughout the Northeast and across the country.

Signs of the Seasons’ primary challenge is attracting and retaining a cadre of volunteers who are able to commit to the program over fairly long periods of time.

As dedicated weather watchers know, variability in seasonal and annual weather patterns is high, making long-term data collection essential if we are to truly detect climate change signals. For example, even a long SOS record of seven years of data on red maple leafout 22

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is still highly variable (Figure 1). Our efforts to address this challenge include tailoring our recruiting efforts to focus on existing entities of structured citizen volunteers and environmental monitoring organizations.

In addition, to support and encourage consistent monitoring and data entry for Signs of the Seasons, we have been working to establish long-term monitoring sites hosted by organizations such as the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, Maine Audubon Fields Pond station, and Acadia National Park. We also plan to establish longterm trailside monitoring sites within state and national parks and forests. Continual upgrades in USA-NPN’s Nature’s Notebook database and data visualization tools, a mobile application for data entry, science webinars, and other educational resources have been critical to attracting and retaining our volunteers and facilitating consistent data entry.

We foresee the need to provide more resources and opportunities for SOS participants to learn about the connections to our changing climate and for participating in field research with our science partners.

Ultimately, we hope participants find ways to share their Figure 1:

Timing of Red Maple Spring Leaf Appearance*

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Fernandez, Ivan J., Catherine Schmitt, Esperanza Stancioff, Sean D. Birkel, Andrew Pershing, Jeffrey Runge, George L. Jacobson, and Paul A. Mayewski. 2015. Maine’s Climate Future: 2015 Update. University of Maine, Orono. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu /climate_facpub/5 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2014.

Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri, and L.A. Meyer. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland.

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2007.

Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

1.3.5.1 Changes in Phenology. https://www.ipcc.ch /publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-3-5-1.html

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

2017. The Consequences of Climate Change. https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

140 Day of the Year

REFERENCES

Miller-Rushing, Abraham J., Toke Thomas Høye, David W. Inouye, and Eric Post. 2010. “The Effects of Phenological Mismatches on Demography.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365:3177–3186. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0148

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Pershing, Andrew J., Michael A. Alexander, Christina M. Hernandez, Lisa A. Kerr, Arnault Le Bris, Katherine E. Mills, Janet A. Nye, et al. 2015. “Slow Adaptation in the Face of Rapid Warming Leads to Collapse of the Gulf of Maine Cod Fishery.” Science 350(6262): 809–812.

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Primack, Richard B., Inés Ibáñez, Hiroyoshi Higuchi, Sang Don Lee, Abraham J. Miller-Rushing, Adam M. Wilson, and John A. Silander Jr. 2009. “Spatial and Interspecific Variability in Phenological Responses to Warming Temperatures.” Biological Conservation 142(11): 2569– 2577.

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own knowledge within their communities to promote local action.

Engaging volunteers along with continuing and expanding our collaboration with partner organizations for long-term monitoring sites will support our goals while retaining and expanding our network of informed observers in future seasons. -

2011

2012

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2014

2015

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*The boxes in the graph represent the most common dates that red maple leaves appeared in a given year in Maine, with the middle line in the box equaling the median. The horizontal bars at the end of the vertical lines represent the latest (top) and earliest (bottom) date recorded for that year.

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Rosenzweig, Cynthia, David Karoly, Marta Vicarelli, Peter Neofotis, Qigang Wu, Gino Casassa, Annette Menzel, et al. 2008. “Attributing Physical and Biological Impacts to Anthropogenic Climate Change.” Nature 453: 353–358.

Stockwell, Sally, and Susan Gallo. 2017. “Citizen Science and Wildlife Conservation: Lessons from 34 Years of the Maine Loon Count.” Maine Policy Review 26(2): 25–32.

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Tebaldi, Claudia, Dennis Adams-Smith, and Alyson Kenward. 2013. Warming Winters: U.S. Temperature Trends. Climate Central, Princeton, NJ. http://www.climatecentral.org/wgts/warming-winters /WarmingWinters.pdf World Economic Forum. 2017. The Global Risks Report 2017, 12th ed. World Economic Forum, Geneva. http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2017/

Esperanza Stancioff is an associate extension professor with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Maine Sea Grant. Her work focuses on climate change adaptation and designing and implementing applied research and educational programs for high-priority areas in marine and coastal ecosystems. Her projects include a number of adaptation efforts focused on reducing climate-related impacts, as well as the development and coordination of state, regional, and national networks.

Stancioff co-manages the Signs of the Seasons program.

Beth Bisson is the interim director and extension program leader of Maine Sea Grant at the University of Maine. She provides leadership and support for the program’s research, extension, and communications activities and serves as a liaison to the program’s diverse partners and constituents in Maine and across the national Sea Grant Network. Beth co-manages the Signs of the Seasons program.

Jessie Muhlin is an associate professor of marine biology at Maine Maritime Academy. Her research interests focus on the reproductive ecology, population genetics, and food-web ecology of fucoid seaweeds in the northwestern Atlantic. Jessie is actively involved in art-science collaborations using marine algae as inspiration.

Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie is a David H. Smith postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.

She studies the paleoecology and historical ecology of alpine and subalpine plant communities in New England; her research supports conservation efforts by integrating across management scales and bridging stakeholder groups at federal, state, and local levels.

Susan Gallo is a wildlife biologist with over 20 years of experience in wildlife monitoring, conservation policy, and land/forest management. Since 1998, she has been a wildlife biologist with Maine Audubon and the director of the Maine Loon Project. Other projects include coordination of the Maine Amphibian Monitoring Program, initiation of an Important Bird Area program for Maine, and development of a Forestry for Maine Birds program.

Sara Randall is a researcher and coordinator focused on ecological responses to environmental change, developing policy and management solutions, and sustaining natural resource–based economies. As assistant coordinator for Signs of the Seasons, she helped citizen scientists document the local effects of climate change by monitoring phenology. Applied marine field research she coordinated led to the discovery that predation, driven by warming ocean temperatures, is the root cause of decline in Maine’s soft-shell clams.

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Citizen Science and Wildlife Conservation: Lessons from 34 Years of the Maine Loon Count

by Sally Stockwell and Susan Gallo

throughout Maine using an innovative iPad audio-recording program (EchoMeter Touch, Wildlife Since the early 1980s—long before the term citizen science was widely adopted— Acoustics).

The long-term goal of Maine Audubon has engaged thousands of dedicated volunteers in myriad wildlife BatME, which is ongoing but surveys and studies, from bat colony monitoring to spring amphibian surveys to loon currently lacks funding, is to docucounts. In this article, the authors describe some of those citizen science projects and ment changes in occurrence and use the longest-running program, the Maine Loon Project and its annual Loon Count, relative abundance of eight bat to showcase what it takes to run a successful program. They also review key lessons species across the state as a way of learned from these projects over the last three decades. documenting the impacts of white nose syndrome and other sources of mortality on our native bat populaMAINE AUDUBON AND CITIZEN SCIENCE tions (Blomberg, Morano, and Mosby 2016).

Abstract

M

aine Audubon has worked with a variety of partners over more than three decades to develop and lead numerous citizen science projects. Each addresses an important conservation need, and all collect information that helps conservation biologists, state and local governments, and citizens to take action to help conserve the target species and habitats. Importantly, they also engage volunteers in science, the outdoors, and activities that foster appreciation of wildlife and wildlife habitat throughout the state.

Major Current and Recent Past Projects

Bat maternal colony and audio surveys Maine Audubon worked with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) to develop a survey protocol for citizen scientists to estimate productivity of Maine’s bats. Unfortunately, due to the sudden onset of white nose syndrome in Maine, over 100 volunteers who were set to locate and survey colonies found mostly abandoned sites. Of the more than 40 colonies initially identified, only one showed production of bat pups. More recently, in 2015 and 2016, Maine Audubon worked with Erik Blomberg at the University of Maine on the BatME Project to recruit and train volunteers to survey bats

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Surveys of brook trout ponds and coastal streams Maine is the last stronghold for wild brook trout in the eastern United States. Pond and lake populations are intact in 185 subwatersheds (compared to only six total intact subwatersheds among the 16 other eastern states), and stream populations are intact in as many Maine subwatersheds as in all other eastern states combined (TU 2006). Even so, some waters have not yet been surveyed, so volunteer anglers were recruited to find previously undocumented wild brook trout populations in remote ponds and coastal streams. After six years, volunteers have successfully surveyed more than 425 remote Maine ponds for which no data were previously available. In the three years since the Coastal Stream Survey was included, volunteers have successfully evaluated 137 coastal streams.

Working with our primary partners of MDIFW and Trout Unlimited, these volunteers have donated over 7,990 hours to the project and found trout or signs of trout in 145 ponds and 65 streams (MA, MDIFW, and TU 2016). The long-term goal of this project is to protect priority ponds by adding them to the State Heritage Fish Waters list, which does not allow stocking or the use of live fish as bait, and to develop new strategies for protecting sea-run brook trout in Maine’s coastal streams, ultimately ensuring the future success of the last, best remaining wild brook trout in the East.

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Wildlife road watch Roads and traffic can make it difficult or impossible for wildlife to move safely across the landscape. Wildlife populations may decline or become locally extinct as a result of vehicle collisions or the inability to move across different vital habitats during their life cycles. Wildlife movement has become even more important for population survival as habitats shift due to climate change and animals adapt by moving to find more suitable habitat. Additionally, vehicle collisions are an ongoing safety concern for Maine drivers. For this project, volunteers watch for and record wildlife (live or dead) on roads throughout the state to document wildlife movement and road mortality. Between July 2010 and December 2014, over 460 volunteers submitted more than 4,800 observations via a web-based reporting program. This includes 6,000 individual animals (60 percent dead on the road) and 153 different species (Charry 2015). This project is in collaboration with the UC Davis Road Ecology Center and is a model for other states and countries around the world. Next year, we will be initiating a new program tracking turtle movement in an effort to reduce road mortality that threatens local extinction of several endangered and threatened species. Additional partners include MDIFW, Maine Department of Transportation, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. The long-term goal is to identify areas with concentrations of wildlife road crossings, improve safe passage of wildlife across our roads, and reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions.

[Maine Audubon’s citizen science programs] engage volunteers in science, the outdoors, and activities that foster appreciation of wildlife and wildlife habitat throughout the state.

Maine amphibian monitoring Suspected long-term declines in worldwide amphibian populations led to an increasing interest in documenting frog and toad population trends in Maine.

This project, led by Maine Audubon in partnership with MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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MDIFW, started in 1997. Volunteers collected information about the abundance of calling amphibians on 61 roadside survey routes across the state three times every spring. Maine was one of the first states to develop an amphibian survey protocol. Eventually that protocol was modified and adapted to a national standard by the US Geological Survey (USGS), which oversaw similar programs for more than 20 other states. The long-term goal of the amphibian-monitoring project was to document changes in the presence and relative abundance of amphibians. Based on Maine data from 2001 to 2011, six species of toads and frogs showed steady significant declines in occurrence, and one (pickerel frog) showed a significant increase (Weir et al. 2014). No longer supported by USGS as of 2016, the future of the program in Maine is uncertain.

Owl monitoring Owls are missed by most volunteer survey protocols (Breeding Bird Survey, Christmas Bird Count), so the status of Maine’s owl populations is unclear. In a span of years from 2002 to 2005, over 100 volunteers ventured out on cold nights from February to April to play calls (on audiocassette tapes!) and listen for responding owls.

They conducted more than 6,000 surveys and heard more than 2,000 owl calls. The main goal of the project was to create a manageable protocol for surveying owls.

Determining which owl species to play on the tapes, in what order, at what time of night to get the most detections, and what volunteers can tolerate in a protocol were all questions explored by the project. At the end of the project, a recommended protocol was developed, but a lack of funding thwarted attempts to continue long-term monitoring efforts. Partners for this project included MDIFW and Unity College.

Vernal pool surveys Vernal pools are small seasonal wetlands that provide breeding habitat for several amphibians and which previously had no regulatory protections. For the first phase of this project, volunteers surveyed pools in the spring to record egg-mass numbers for vernal pool specialists (wood frogs, spotted salamanders, and bluespotted salamanders) and to document other pool characteristics that might help identify the most productive or significant pools. Legislation protecting significant vernal pools was subsequently passed in 2006, with vernal pool citizen scientists helping raise awareness of the importance of this habitat among legislators and 26

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within their communities. Starting in 2008, additional volunteers were recruited and trained to survey all potential vernal pools mapped in 12 towns to determine which ones were significant and therefore subject to special protection measures. Partners include the University of Maine, MDIFW, local municipalities, and local land trusts. The long-term goal is to help towns and developers proactively plan which pools to protect and where to steer new development.

A CASE STUDY FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS: MAINE AUDUBON’S ANNUAL LOON COUNT Background In the late 1970s, as environmental activism and awareness of the importance of clean water was growing, concerns emerged that Maine’s common loon population might be dwindling. Maine Audubon created a partnership with MDIFW to develop a protocol for volunteer loon surveys. That protocol for the annual Loon Count has been in place since 1983 (Lee and Arbuckle 1988) and has involved many thousands of volunteers over the course of 34 years. The count is held annually on the third Saturday of July from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m., a time of day before loons start moving around lakes and a time of year when most loon eggs have hatched but before chicks have been lost to predators. A sample of counts from different-sized lakes is used to create a reliable estimate of the population in the southern half of the state from year to year.

The Survey The count uses paper forms, requiring substantial work to organize, photocopy, and mail maps and count forms to more than 900 volunteers. A small group of 45 to 50 people act as regional coordinators. These super-volunteers distribute and then collect all the count forms from individual counters in their regions, paying for postage and sometimes printing, and also making themselves available to answer questions counters may have before or after the count. Some coordinators even prepare their own newsletters or emails to share information and keep in touch with counters not just for count day but also throughout the season. Many have been coordinators for decades. Using regional coordinators gives the program a more personal and local touch than if everything was sent from the main office. It also significantly reduces administrative time (and postage costs) for Maine Audubon. Additional MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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volunteers in the office help check and enter count data into a database and update addresses and contact information for loon counters. These volunteers are truly indispensable for this project.

Volunteers Volunteers for the Loon Count embody the characteristics essential for successful citizen science projects.

They are a community of extremely dedicated individuals, with participation lasting on average more than 10 years. A surprising number (more than 30) have counted for 30 years or more. Many bring children— even grandchildren—along, and it is not uncommon for these younger participants to take over count-day responsibilities in time. For many, the Loon Count is a family tradition.

The simplicity of the protocol and the limited time required (a half hour per year to count, plus a few additional minutes to turn in data) likely contribute to this dedication. It is, of course, compounded by the charisma of common loons and the passion that loon counters have for them. Counters watch for their nesting pair to return each spring and wait anxiously for any chicks that might hatch. They watch the chicks disappear or grow up, and they wish the loons bon voyage as they fly off to the ocean in the fall. They love to share stories about territorial battles between neighboring pairs, successful nests, attempts at predation by eagles, and songs and calls they have heard.

Most importantly, counters have learned not only to count but also to help their loons. They find out that close disturbances from people in boats or on land can cause a nesting loon to abandon the nest either temporarily (exposing it to predators) or permanently. They understand that high wakes from passing boats will wash over a nest and wash out eggs and that lead sinkers and jigs can be ingested and are a leading cause of fatal lead poisoning. They know that good water quality is essential for loons to find food and raise their young.

Results Over 34 years of the project, there has been a slow, steady rise in the adult loon population. As of 2016, we have twice as many adult loons in the southern half of the state (2,848) as we did when we started counting (1,416) (Figure 1). Chick numbers have stayed consistent, rising and falling markedly from one year to the next. The highest chick estimate was in 2011 (619), and the lowest was in 1984 (100). The most recent count of 27

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Number of Loons

Estimated Size of Loon Population (Adults and Chicks) in the Southern Half of Maine (South of the 45th Parallel), from 1984 to 2016

be able to complete all the surveys.

If there’s a lot of specialized equipment needed, the number of people who can participate is 3500 likely to shrink rapidly.

In this way, the Loon Count Adults 3000 is perfect in its scope: it is only Chicks once a year; it lasts only half an 2500 hour; it can be done from shore, kayak, canoe, or small motorboat; it requires only simple observa2000 tion and counting skills; and data sheets are easy to submit. As a 1500 result, the barriers to entry are low, and the project draws volunteers 1000 from a wide array of ages and backgrounds. Although we do 500 have occasional issues, for the most part, volunteers follow directions and report data in a 0 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 timely way.

Year In contrast, participation in 384 chicks is one of the highest recorded, yet unlikely to the Maine Amphibian Monitoring Program was more indicate a significant trend over time from the first estidifficult to sustain over time. It required three after-dark mate of chicks in 1983 (176) due to the year-to-year surveys per year during specific windows of time over variability in count estimates. two months; it often proved difficult for volunteers to complete all three surveys year after year; some survey SUCCESSFUL CITIZEN SCIENCE: routes were remote and hard to get to, sometimes LESSONS LEARNED requiring overnight stays after the surveys were complete.

Nevertheless, we had many individuals who surveyed ased on our experience with the annual Loon Count, the same routes for 10 years or more. In fact, out of all as well as with the many other citizen science 11 northeastern states with similar monitoring programs, programs Maine Audubon has undertaken over the Mainers hold the record for the most observations, with years, here are six lessons we think could be useful to a total of 1,097 records, or nearly 21 percent of all others embarking on citizen science projects. surveys in the Northeast (Weir et al. 2014)! This may be in part because many Mainers feel connected to their Lesson 1: Be Realistic natural environment and are eager to participate in such Volunteers are at the core of citizen science. Citizen a study. But we also consistently promoted participation science volunteers are often passionate about the subject and actively recruited new volunteers each year. and generous with their time, but it is important to remember that they are not paid staff. Be sure you are Lesson 2: Longevity Is Key asking volunteers to do something they can successfully If you look at the graph of the results of the Loon complete and sustain over time with minimum overCount from 1984 to 2016, you can see that if you were sight and maximum confidence and accuracy. to count only the population for any three-year period, If you ask too much of volunteers, they may not you would get a very different picture of the population follow through. If the instructions are too long or trend than if you look at the long-term changes over 33 complicated, they’ll likely give up before they even try. If years. There is a lot of variation over time; only by you ask them to go out too many times in a season, counting over a long period can you see the overall trend, there’s a good chance life will intervene and they won’t which in this case is clearly positive.

Figure 1:

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To avoid high rates of turnover among volunteers— which can be time consuming and costly for staff who then have to spend additional time recruiting new volunteers—we try to create a sense of community among counters. We send regular emails, newsletters, and reports with updates and summary information to volunteers, so they can see their results in action and feel connected to the project and to each other. We also focus on consistently recruiting small numbers of new volunteers each year for lakes that have lost counters and occasionally recognizing the generous contributions volunteers make (see Lesson 6).

Keeping volunteers engaged in the annual Loon Count year after year has also allowed us to make significant progress with public outreach. Sharing publications like Living in Loon Territory, offering Look Out for Loons signs, and delivering slide shows and multimedia presentations have helped raise awareness about the life cycle of loons, where they nest and where they raise their chicks, how to live near loons without disturbing them, and how to protect their lake habitat and water quality. Building a team of knowledgeable and caring loon counters has led to better stewardship of both loons and lakes, both in their communities and in the state legislature. Even better, that culture of stewardship is now being passed on to new generations.

Lesson 3: Longevity Is Hard to Sustain Supporting citizen science programs takes a surprising amount of staff time and expertise. At a minimum, staff need to develop scientifically sound survey methods and clear protocols that are easy to understand and follow; develop informative but concise outreach and training materials; recruit volunteers who are generally busy and already committed to many other projects and causes; collect, enter, and store data; be available to support volunteers when they write or call with questions; be patient and attentive as volunteers share their stories; and then analyze data and report out results in a meaningful way. For some programs, staff also need to develop and host training workshops or spend time in the field with volunteers to ensure they understand and implement protocols.

With a long-term commitment comes a need to both honor the traditions developed over the span of a project and to introduce new twists to keep things fresh.

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returned by mail afterward. In 2018, we will introduce a new online data portal, allowing counters to enter their own count data. While the portal has the potential to greatly reduce resources and staff time committed to the project, it will not work for a significant portion of long-time loon counters who are not comfortable online.

Maintaining the paper-based count for these long-time counters is critical to keeping the feeling of community and inclusiveness that the Loon Count has fostered in its three decades.

Building a team of knowledgeable and caring loon counters has led to better stewardship of both loons and lakes, both in their communities and in the state legislature.

Also with long-term commitment comes a constant need to raise funds to support staff time and other program expenses. Volunteers rightly do not want to pay for their citizen science experience as they feel they are already contributing their time, energy, and expertise.

Foundations frequently cover initial start-up costs for new citizen science programs, but rarely sustain them over the long term. Host organizations might want, but not be able, to cover costs indefinitely. It can be challenging to sustain long-term programs.

Occasionally we have tried new approaches to reduce costs or raise funds for the annual Loon Count.

At one point, we considered spacing the count to every other year or even every five years, which would still give us reliable long-term data, but potentially reduce some costs. The volunteers revolted! They really look forward to their annual count and wanted a yearly record of results for their lakes. In reality, the costs saved from a more periodic count would likely be lost as people would drift away from the project and recruitment costs for a count every other or every five years would be quite high. Another time, we tried to introduce a small fee ($5) that counters would pay to participate. This is not uncommon in citizen science projects, but it was flatly rejected by loon counters. Despite our best attempts to explain the need for funds to cover expenses, angry counters left the project, and it took several years for the 29

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project to recover. Aside from occasional grants and gifts from donors, which are essential, Maine Audubon supports the majority of the expenses for the Maine Loon Project from membership and annual fund donations because it closely aligns with our mission of engaging people to conserve Maine’s wildlife and habitat. Over time, a number of loyal loon counters have also become donors and important financial supporters of the program—another benefit of its longevity.

Lesson 4: Partnerships Are Essential We rely on many different partners to ensure the success of our citizen science programs. We collaborate with state and federal agencies, academic institutions, businesses, sporting groups, civic groups, land trusts, and other nonprofits to accomplish our goals. Partners improve the quality of the program, the data collection and analysis, the public reach, and the likelihood of success. But coordinating with others also requires patience, persistence, sensitivity to differing viewpoints and approaches, and sometimes results in time lapses and delays. Clarifying the specific roles of each partner at the start of the program is critical, as is having one point person to shepherd the partnership and keep people moving along the timeline.

Examples of some of our partnerships include the following:

• UC Davis Road Ecology Center built our Wildlife Road Watch web program and guided us through the process of analyzing data to identify hot spots and high-density crossing areas. Currently, they are building a new mobile app that we will be beta testing soon (https://roadecology.ucdavis.edu/).

• Twelve towns in southern Maine contributed extensive staff time to map potential vernal pools, train volunteers, reach out to private landowners for permission for volunteers to survey pools on their property, and produce final maps of pools where egg masses were found (http://www .vernalpools.me/).

• Maine BASS Nation invited us to distribute Fish Lead-Free posters, stickers, and lead-free tackle at several fishing derbies around the state (https:// fishleadfree.org/me/).

• Maine Lakes Volunteer Monitoring Program is currently collaborating with us to create a new online data portal that will build a loon count

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database at the Lakes of Maine website (http:// www.lakesofmaine.org/).

US Geological Survey supported Maine’s amphibian-monitoring effort for 18 years, providing maps of amphibian survey routes, audio tests for volunteers, and long-term population trend data analysis. The partnership ended in 2016 when USGS dropped the program, which at the time was operating in 22 states.

University of Maine Professor Aram Calhoun and her assistants provided professional expertise for vernal pool survey projects and guidebooks. The university also hosts the Maine Vernal Pools website, with publications and results from previous citizen science projects and information about current research and public policy initiatives (http://www.vernalpools.me/).

UMaine Cooperative Extension serves as lead for the Signs of the Seasons program, which has incorporated a common loon phenology protocol into their program and into their online data entry portal Nature’s Notebook (https:// extension.umaine.edu/signs-of-the-seasons/).

Maine Lakes Society hosts the Lake Smart program, which now includes both a Loon Smart and Stream Smart component. Counters can be Loon Smart if they not only meet Lake Smart standards for their houses and yards that protect water quality, but also protect loon habitat, reduce disturbance, and share information with friends and neighbors. In just two years of the program, more than 100 camps and camp owners in Maine have been certified as Loon Smart (http://mainelakessociety.org/).

Lesson 5: Celebrate Your Volunteers!

Volunteers don’t want organizations to waste their money on gifts for them, but they do appreciate useful tools and recognition. Following are some of our more successful efforts to make volunteers feel special:

• A vernal pool–monitoring Frisbee. Perfect for dipping under salamander and frog eggs to help with counting, we gave one to all vernal pool survey volunteers.

• A published list of Loon Count volunteers and volunteer coordinators that have served for 20 years or more in our member magazine Habitat.

• Certificates of achievement mailed to individual volunteers for long-time or outstanding service.

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• Personalized thank-you cards with hand-tied flies mailed to all active angler volunteers.

• Periodic feature stories about volunteers in Habitat.

We can always do more. With all the work our citizen science volunteers have done over decades, and all they have contributed to scientific understanding and conservation in Maine, they deserve all the recognition we can give them.

Lesson 6: Move People to Action Once volunteers are invested in their program and understand the ecology of the species or habitats with which they are working and the potential threats to those species and habitats, they are often motivated to go a step further and help protect them. For us, this is one of the most important reasons for doing citizen science programs: We hope our programs will motivate people to care about wildlife and habitat enough to get involved and become better stewards. Often, they need to be asked and given the tools to do so.

Loon counters provide an excellent example of what a group of motivated individuals can accomplish with a little support and guidance. They post Living in Loon Territory brochures in their camps with a list of things to do to help loons, including how to reduce boating impacts and hazards from fishing. They post Look Out for Loons signs near nests to deter people from getting too close. They exchange their lead fishing tackle for lead-free replacements. They invite Maine Audubon to speak about loons and loon conservation at their annual lake association meetings. They borrow our traveling loon kit to bring to schools and youth groups to show them what real loons, feet, wings, bones, and eggs look like up close. They sign up to have their property inspected by the Lake Smart program to see what else they can do to help protect water quality and loon habitat, such as planting shrubs along the shoreline and reducing runoff from roofs and driveways. And sometimes, they come to Augusta, Maine, to testify at public hearings.

This last step—getting involved in citizen advocacy in support of conservation issues—is the step we would ultimately like to see all citizen science volunteers take.

Having informed local voices contact their representatives is far more powerful than anything Maine Audubon staff can do alone. Responding to our action alerts, numerous Loon Count volunteers have written letters to

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the editor, called or written letters to their state or local officials and legislators, or otherwise spoken out about an important proposed rule or bill that will affect loons or lakes. Many have even showed up at the state capitol to testify. A small sample of legislation that loon counters have helped pass over the years includes • allowing municipalities to adopt special boating restrictions on certain portions of (or entire) lakes if the boating activity is deemed to threaten the success of loons and other wildlife; • banning certain sizes of lead sinkers and jigs to reduce loon mortality from lead poisoning; • protecting lake water quality by limiting development and timber harvesting in the Shoreland Zone; • providing funding for boat inspections at public boat launches to minimize the transport and introduction of nonnative invasive aquatic plants.

Once volunteers are invested in their program and understand the ecology…and the potential threats…they are often motivated to go a step further and help protect them.

The Fish Lead-Free program is a particularly instructive case. First, volunteers helped us collect dead loons, which were sent to Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine for necropsies to determine the cause of death (the leading cause for adult loons in Maine being lead poisoning from the ingestion of lead sinkers and jigs).

The data were summarized into a report for legislators, and Maine Audubon worked with legislative allies to introduce a bill banning the sale and use of certain-sized lead sinkers and jigs. Volunteers called their legislators and spoke at hearings asking them to support the ban, with the bill amended to ban only the sale of some of the tackle in question. After several years, more data on dead loons were collected that determined loons were still dying after ingesting certain-sized lead tackle that had not been included in the first ban. Finally, a ban on

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both the sale and use of a wider size range of sinkers and jigs was passed into law.

The success of this advocacy effort owes much to the help of loon counters all along the way. Following each ban, Maine Audubon mounted an educational campaign to encourage anglers to switch from lead to lead-free sinkers and jigs, along with lead tackle collections and exchange programs. This was all undertaken with assistance from loon count volunteers, lake associations, and others across the state.

Legislators repeatedly comment on the number of calls they receive on bills related to loons and lake water quality. We know definitively that our Loon-Countvolunteers-turned-citizen-activists have played a substantive role in determining the outcome of these bills and the future of loon and lake conservation in Maine.

CONCLUSION

“L

et’s all keep up the good work,” says Carol Gestwicki, a 30-year Loon Count veteran. “When we work to protect the loons, we also protect the lakes and ponds, the mountains, and our entire state. Being aware makes all the difference.”

Given the right support, tools, and training, citizen scientists can provide an invaluable service to wildlife professionals and conservation efforts. They allow us to collect data, identify issues, and demonstrate trends that we could never possibly do alone. Their work can and does lead to better stewardship and protection of our wildlife and habitat through public awareness, community action, and local, state, and federal policy making.

Understanding how to cultivate a community of volunteer citizen scientists is key to helping an organization leverage this incredible resource into a successful citizen science project. We have been doing this for over three decades, and we learn new lessons each time. We are lucky to live and work in a state with so many volunteers who are passionate about conservation and willing to donate their time and energy as Maine Audubon citizen scientists. REFERENCES Blomberg, Eric, Sabrina Morano, and Cory Mosby. 2016.

BatME: Monitoring Distribution and Trends of Bats in Maine Using Outreach-based Citizen Science: Year 1 Report. Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology, University of Maine, Orono. https://batmedotorg.files.wordpress.com/2016/03 /batme-year-1-report1.pdf

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Charry, B. 2015. Wildlife Roadwatch Citizen Scientist Observations 2010–2014. Maine Audubon, Falmouth. http://www.maineaudubon.org/wp-content /uploads/2017/03/WRW-ReportREV.pdf Lee, M., and J. Arbuckle. 1988. “Maine Common Loons: A Glance Back and an Eye toward the Future.” In Papers from the 1987 Conference on Loon Research and Management, edited by P. Strong, 167–176. North American Loon Fund, Meredith, NH. MA (Maine Audubon), MDIFW (Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife), TU (Trout Unlimited).

2016. 2016 Brook Trout Survey Project: Remote Ponds and Coastal Streams Volunteer Angler Survey Results. http://www.maineaudubon.org/wp-content /uploads/2017/03/2016-Final-Report-for-Public.pdf TU (Trout Unlimited). 2006. Eastern Brook Trout: Status and Threats. Produced by Trout Unlimited for the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture. TU, Arlington, VA. http:// easternbrooktrout.org/reports/eastern-brook-trout -status-and-threats/view Weir, Linda A., Andy Royle, Kimberly D. Gazenski, and Oswaldo Villena Carpio. 2014. “Northeast Regional and State Trends in Anuran Occupancy from Calling Survey Data (2001–2011) from the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program.” Herpetological Conservation and Biology 9(2): 223–245.

Sally Stockwell is a wildlife ecologist with experience in conservation of nongame, rare, and endangered species in freshwater wetlands, coastal beaches and marshes, and northern forests.

She has additional experience as an interpretive naturalist, environmental education instructor, and outdoor adventure leader and is the director of conservation at Maine Audubon.

Susan Gallo is a wildlife biologist with over 20 years of experience in citizen science, wildlife monitoring, conservation policy, and land/forest management. In her current position at Maine Audubon, she has worked with thousands of citizen scientists monitoring bats, owls, loons, songbirds and amphibians across the state of Maine.

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Community-based Strategies for Strengthening Science and Influencing Policy: Vernal Pool Initiatives in Maine

by Jessica S. Jansujwicz and Aram Calhoun

approaches to link scientific knowledge, stakeholder decision making, Scientific research is not having the impact it could and should have on natural resources and on-the-ground conservation outcomes (Jansujwicz, Calhoun, conservation. Rather than conceptualize and conduct research in isolation, we need new and Lilieholm 2013). Increasingly, approaches to identify and investigate problems in coordination with stakeholders, poliwe recognize that conceptualizing cymakers, and others who would benefit from the research. By supporting partnerships and conducting research in isolation between researchers and the public, citizen science creates new opportunities for stakedoes not work and that scientists holders to interact with scientific experts. This process of public collaboration with scienneed to identify research issues in tists has far-reaching implications for science, management, and policy. Drawing on two communication with stakeholders, decades of work on vernal pool management strategies in Maine, we illustrate how citipolicymakers, and others who would zen science and engaged research helped bridge the science-policy gap. As scientists, benefit from the research. This we learned from diverse stakeholders at multiple levels of decision making, and this recognition leads to a greater feedback led to improvements in our citizen science programs, gradual adaptations to emphasis on conducting research so our scientific research process, and locally based, innovative vernal pool policy initiatives. that it gets used (Clark et al. 2016).

Citizen science offers a potential solution to bridge the gap between science and policy by changing the SETTING UP THE PROBLEM way science is produced and used in conservation and management decisions. As a participatory model that reat, cutting-edge research that advances the scienencourages public engagement in scientific research tific community’s understanding of urgent and (Irwin 1995), citizen science provides a practical approach important problems is done every day. It is highlighted to link science with societal needs and improve outcomes in scientific journals, and it advances scientific knowlfor both human and other natural systems. A broad range edge. But does this research have an impact on policy? of initiatives falls under the rubric of citizen science, so it Policy change is vitally important, but it does not is useful to identify a unifying principle: By supporting happen simply because scientists have studied an issue partnerships between researchers and the public, citizen (Silka 2017). As scientists, we have seen that science science creates opportunities for stakeholders to interact frequently does not have the impact it should have on with scientific experts, and this process of public collabopolicy. There is widespread recognition of the growing ration with scientists has far-reaching implications for gap between the production of scientific knowledge and science, management, and policy. A key aspect (and one societal action, particularly in natural resources conserthat is not widely discussed) is the ability of citizen vation (Fox et al. 2006; Hall and Fleishman 2009; science programs to engage a broader network of stakeKnight et al. 2008; Meffee, Ehrenfeld, and Noss 2006; holders (i.e., beyond the volunteer citizen scientist).

Reyers et al. 2010), which highlights the need for new Casting a wider net over the stakeholder groups allows Abstract

G

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A web comic by Laura Bollert with Kris Hoffmann

more diverse perspectives to inform decision making at In this article, we draw on almost two decades of multiple levels of governance and at multiple points in work in Maine with citizen science and stakeholders the research and policy process (Jansujwicz, Calhoun, focused on management strategies for vernal pools to and Lilieholm 2013). illustrate one approach that helped span the gap Engagement of diverse stakeholders at multiple between knowledge and outcomes. We share what we, levels of social structure (i.e., government agencies as university scientists, learned from diverse stakeholders municipal officials, landowners) is important: What and how this feedback led to improvements in our might be easily embraced as a goal by one stakeholder citizen science program, gradual adaptations to our group may not necessarily resonate with others. For scientific research process, and ultimately to innovative example, at a landscape scale, the importance of wetland vernal pool policy initiatives. Our purpose is to provide conservation in reducing flood risk, enhancing biodiveran exemplary case for how citizen science can be mobisity, and providing education and recreational opportulized to meet multiple objectives of diverse stakeholder nities is now widely recognized and reflected in codified groups at different levels of social structure. conservation action. Yet, individual landowners who might be looking to sell or enhance their properties might find land use and regulatory restrictions around wetlands to be cumbersome, intrusive, expensive, and confusing.

Benefits realized at a regional or landscape level do not necessary accrue to the individual landowner or citizen. This tension between planning and management objectives at different scales (i.e., concerns over private property rights and societal The UMaine Vernal Pool Team has produced a new, comical way to learn about the animals rights) often exacerbates or that live in these small wetlands. The free, inspirational, and educational comics are available on ignites fear, misunderthe Of Pools and People webpage (http://www.vernalpools.me/comic/). standing, and frustration for decision makers and those affected by the decisions. To more effectively The following questions inform our discussion: balance these concerns and meet diverse management • What did we learn from different stakeholders objectives, it is necessary to understand decision tradeat each stage of the process, and how did this offs at multiple levels. Understanding the perspectives of feed into the design and implementation of our stakeholders is a critical first step towards integrating program? important information and communication needs into • How did each level of decision maker inform conservation and management approaches. Positioned incremental changes in vernal pool conservation at the nexus between science and society, citizen science policy? can foster a better understanding of stakeholder needs • What gaps and policy or management impli(Jansujwicz, Calhoun, and Lilieholm 2013), and when cations remain, and how can they be better used in innovative ways, can “make our lives—individaddressed by citizen science? ually and collectively—better” (Silka 2017: 91).

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In answering these questions, we first provide a brief description of vernal pool conservation and citizen science in Maine. We then discuss lessons learned about two simultaneous and important aspects of citizen science (Cooper 2016): (1) producing reliable knowledge of what can be done to address conservation and development decisions around vernal pools and (2) developing and maintaining social capital (networks and relationships) critical for putting this new knowledge to use. Using these “two interlocking keys” of citizen science as a framework (Cooper 2016: 11), we discuss how the perspectives, concerns, and information needs of the different decision makers involved in community-based vernal pool conservation planning informed the process and influenced policy outcomes at key decision points in the policy-making process. While we draw on a specific example of vernal pool conservation planning in Maine, lessons learned from our experiences are transferable to the conservation of other small natural features on private lands (see Hunter et al. 2017).

VERNAL POOLS AND CITIZEN SCIENCE IN MAINE

V

ernal pools in the northeastern United States are small, seasonal wetlands that occur in forested landscapes. Pools typically fill with snowmelt or runoff in the spring and provide critical breeding habitat for amphibians and invertebrates and important resting and foraging habitat for a number of rare and endangered species in Maine (Calhoun and deMaynadier 2008).

While vernal pools are unique ecosystems that perform important functions at the landscape scale (Cohen et al. 2016), protecting pools is a challenge for natural resource managers because they are small, ephemeral, occur predominantly on private land (Baldwin and deMaynadier 2009), and are difficult to identify remotely (DiBello et al. 2016).

Historically, vernal pools in New England only received attention on a case-by-case basis by government agencies charged with protecting wetlands. Numerous federal and state agencies weighed in on project proposals resulting in an overlapping and confusing regulatory process. Gradually, as more became known about vernal pools and their critical role in the landscape, new approaches to address their long-term sustainability emerged. Today, Maine has one of the most comprehensive and stringent measures for protecting vernal pools in northeastern North America (Mahaney and Klemens

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2008). Under the Maine Natural Resources Protection Act (NRPA), which provides for the regulation of wetlands and other important natural resources (38 MRSA §§ 480-A to 480-Z), a subset of ecologically outstanding vernal pools are designated as “significant wildlife habitat.” Beginning in 2006, Maine adopted a definition for identifying significant vernal pools (SVPs) (Significant Wildlife Habitat Rules, Chapter 335, Section 9 under NRPA) based on the abundance and presence of vernal pool indicator species—fairy shrimp, wood frogs, and blue-spotted and spotted salamanders— or use by state-listed threatened or endangered species.

An SVP includes the pool and adjacent terrestrial habitat within a 250-foot radius around the pool from the high-water mark. This proactive management of vernal pools evolved slowly, taking more than 10 years to address the regulatory gaps for their protection (Jansujwicz and Calhoun 2010). Throughout this history, citizen science played an important role in raising awareness of vernal pools and informing policy change. Foundational projects include the Very Important Pool (VIP) program and Maine Vernal Pool Mapping and Assessment Program (VPMAP).

The VIP program was initiated in 1999 by the Maine Audubon Society to inventory vernal pools statewide. This outreach program collected data on poolbreeding amphibians and their reproductive behavior in pools in southern, central, and northern Maine for five years (see Calhoun et al. 2003 for a summary). The VIP program’s goals were (1) to raise the profile of vernal pools through statewide citizen participation, (2) to engage the news media to make vernal pools a household word and a resource of interest, thus bringing home the importance of these small wetlands to the public, and (3) to gather baseline inventory and assessment data on vernal pools that could help scientists, regulators, and legislators understand the resource and craft a definition of vernal pools and SVPs. The Maine Vernal Pool Mapping and Assessment Program (VPMAP) followed eight years later in 2007.

When the Maine State Legislature passed the vernal pool law in 2007, vernal pools were not mapped, and this posed a significant challenge for regulatory compliance.

In response to the need to know where vernal pools and specifically SVPs persisted in the local landscape, the University of Maine and Maine Audubon Society jointly initiated VPMAP, which was designed to reduce uncertainty in development proposals by offering landowners a free assessment to determine whether a potential 35

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vernal pool (PVP) met the biological criteria for significance under NRPA. Significance, used to identify SVPs, is determined by threshold egg mass counts of poolbreeding amphibians during the peak breeding season in the spring, or by the presence of fairy shrimp or an endangered or threatened species. PVPs are first identified remotely by aerial photography, but then require field assessments in the spring by a citizen scientist, consultant, agency biologist, or other qualified individual to determine whether they meet the biological criteria of an SVP. Organizers of VPMAP worked collaboratively with interested local towns to map and conduct ecological assessments of vernal pools on public and private land using trained citizen scientists. The goals of VPMAP were (1) to develop a map of vernal pools and particularly SVPs with the goal of submitting data to the state database, (2) to provide towns with a map and data on pools for use as a decision-making tool in planning and development activities, and (3) to raise public awareness of the value of vernal pool resources by educating citizens through hands-on engagement in pool assessment and documentation.

Emerging Lessons from Citizen Science in Maine

science can build relationships at the local and state level, enhance data-collection activities, and lead to real policy impacts. Accordingly, our discussion is organized around Cooper’s (2016) conceptualization of citizen science as simultaneously creating reliable knowledge of what can be done and social capital to make it happen (Figure 1).

Building Knowledge to Identify and Address Conservation and Management Challenges

Most New England vernal pools occur on private lands, which introduces an interesting mix of stakeholders including multiple scales of government, diverse resource-management organizations, and heterogeneous landowner and development community interests (Calhoun et al. 2014). As a consequence of these ownership patterns and patchwork of regulatory mechanisms governing vernal pools in Maine, we realized that key stakeholders at multiple governance levels would be essential to identify opportunities for vernal pool conservation and to address management challenges.

Identification of knowledge gaps and management constraints was an iterative process. New issues were continuously identified as understanding of the resource improved, as stakeholder knowledge needs evolved, and as more stakeholders became relevant to decision making. Here citizen science played a dual role: it offered a platform for the identification of new challenges to bridging the science-policy gap, and it fostered development of new approaches to vernal pool conservation that built upon a strong base of citizen participation and involvement. In our Maine example, each

In the following sections, we share our experiences with the VIP program and VPMAP. We discuss how our research and community-based citizen science involved the people who would ultimately use the research results; how we involved them in identifying the problems, tailoring data collection to reasonable goals; and how we as a team developed and sustained feedback loops that ultimately built local capacity to enhance stakeholder communication and long- Figure 1: Two Interlocking Keys for Vernal Pool Citizen

Science Outcomes term impact on land use decisions. We share the success we achieved, but also identify the challenges we faced in the implementation of our citizen science programs and in acceptance of Stakeholderthe data for policy making at the local, state, and engaged federal level. We offer examples of how we, as Reliable student research Social Capital Knowledge scientists, work with citizens and policymakers Two-way • Trust and how we involve students in our research and • Ecology communication • Relationships community engagement activities. We use the feedback loops • Policy two citizen science projects as the foundation for • Networks • Socioeconomics Collaborative this discussion because the partnerships, cuttingcorrelated projects edge research, and innovative policy initiatives were outcomes that emerged from these community-based initiatives. The outcomes of VIP and Source: Cooper (2016) VPMAP illustrate how community-based citizen

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iteration of problem identification and policy change was reflected in changes to the citizen science model.

Our efforts in vernal pool citizen science were built upon previous models, but adapted to meet new stakeholder priorities, management realities, and emerging resource concerns. This evolution involved almost two decades of collaborative work. Early vernal pool conservation efforts were initiated in direct response to problems identified at the federal and state level: federal regulators had called upon Maine to improve its poor record in regulating small wetlands, including vernal pools, but the state and the public knew little about the resource, making progress a regulatory and public relations challenge (Calhoun et al. 2014). Citizen science through the VIP program helped fill these gaps.

Important outcomes of the VIP program included citizen scientists trained to conduct vernal pool assessments; data on more than 400 vernal pools; dozens of workshops, newspaper and magazine articles, radio and television programs, and a manual, The Maine Citizen’s Guide to Locating and Documenting Vernal Pools (Calhoun 2003). The VIP program also motivated scientific research. Five master’s and five doctoral students produced data on life history needs of pool-breeding amphibians, two state-listed species of turtles depending upon pools, and amphibian responses to forestry practices (see Baldwin, Calhoun, and DeMaynadier 2006a, b; Joyal, McCullough, and Hunter 2001; Lichko and Calhoun 2003; Oscarson and Calhoun 2007; Patrick, Calhoun, and Hunter 2007; Vasconcelos and Calhoun 2004, 2006). Information collected helped regulators come to terms with the science of vernal pools and explore mechanisms to fulfill legislative mandates to define pools and determine significance (Jansujwicz and Calhoun 2010).

While the VIP program (in combination with student research) was instrumental in filling initial data gaps and in bringing vernal pools into the public lexicon, it was perhaps most influential in identifying emerging issues and concerns. As the important functions and values of vernal pools became better known, the problem definition shifted from determining significance and raising awareness to identifying appropriate management measures that would facilitate on-the-ground conservation outcomes that were based on the emerging science.

The next phase of citizen science reflected a larger paradigm shift from top-down reactive management to an emphasis on local-level planning decisions. While MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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federal pressure played a role in motivating regulatory approaches to vernal pool conservation, regulatory compliance was ultimately the responsibility of local managers and private landowners. In grappling with the 2007 SVP regulations at the local level, the actions (and reactions) of different stakeholders highlighted new issues. First, vernal pools were not mapped, and most towns did not have the expertise and capacity to identify vernal pools, much less SVPs, in their jurisdictions.

Second, while based on the best available science but tempered with politics, the regulations were highly controversial. Landowners feared that the regulations would restrict what they could do with their property, and the added expense and delay of having to hire a contractor to survey potential pools in the spring only added to their frustration. This regulatory backlash threatened to derail conservation efforts. New conservation approaches were needed to alleviate the burden on local towns and private landowners and to reduce public fear and misunderstanding of the new regulations. As the new rules on vernal pool rolled out and tensions mounted, stakeholders and researchers identified the need for stronger partnerships and engagement at the municipal level. Citizen science was introduced as a potential tool to fill this gap.

While sharing similar goals with the VIP program, VPMAP included additional public outreach and encouraged more municipal involvement. Ecological assessment and data collection was still a priority; however, the program placed a greater focus on decisions at the municipal and individual landowner scale. As described earlier, VPMAP was designed to create a townwide vernal pool database for use by municipal planners to guide development within their jurisdiction. VPMAP more specifically addressed landowners’ needs by providing a less expensive and more accessible method to learn about potential vernal pools on their properties.

Over three field seasons, VPMAP expanded on the VIP by engaging 10 Maine towns, incorporating years of research into web-based support for volunteers, and closely coordinating with state agencies to meet their data needs. The VPMAP addressed emergent issues and achieved important outcomes, particularly with respect to data collection, education, and stakeholder-engagement activities (discussed in more detail later in this article and in Jansujwicz, Calhoun, and Lilieholm 2013; Jansujwicz et al. 2013). However, VPMAP also exposed underlying tensions that continued the iterative cycle of problem identification.

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The culmination of this second and most recent phase of citizen science identified recurrent challenges to pool conservation. On the one hand, stakeholders continued to be concerned about the limitations of the state legislation (i.e., regulating less than a quarter of all pools and regulating an inadequate amount of key amphibian habitat around each pool). On the other hand, there were concerns about perceived excesses (i.e., regulating too many pools and adjacent uplands and infringing on private property rights) (Calhoun et al. 2014; Jansujwicz et al. 2013). Vernal pool regulations once again became the subject of intense political scrutiny and the target of attempted rollbacks with the

Effective conservation is an adaptive and iterative process, and citizen science provided a pathway for addressing stakeholder needs and identifying new issues. goal of allowing increased development activity associated with vernal pools. This ushered in a new phase of adaptive management and focus on producing local alternatives. Maps produced by VPMAP served as a catalyst for considering vernal pool tradeoffs at the local scale, and municipal participants in VPMAP, state officials, and university researchers began to discuss how to effectively conserve vernal pools given the current political and social context. Emerging from discussions with citizen scientists and other town participants, it was clear to us that economic issues needed to be addressed before pool conservation efforts could reach a new level. Passive maps and voluntary approaches would not be enough to conserve pools using a local, landscape-level approach that would both conserve pools and invite economic growth and vitality.

Our team took this to heart, and the feedback provided by our program partners led to another research grant that funded five doctoral students to study vernal pool ecology and the economics of conservation of poolscapes in developing landscapes from 2013 to the present. It also inspired the formation of a diverse stakeholder group to address alternative conservation mechanisms for vernal pools that would be locally based and MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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address economic issues on private land. The stakeholder group—made up of participants from the development community, academia, state and federal agencies, and municipal officials—met for more than six years and developed a Maine Vernal Pool Special Area Management Plan (VP SAMP) that provides a solution to challenges highlighted by citizen scientists and municipal officials (see Calhoun et al. 2014; Levesque, Calhoun, and Bell 2017; Levesque et al. 2016 for more details). The VP SAMP was accepted by federal and state agencies and provides a voluntary alternative mitigation mechanism for developers and landowners to conserve vernal pools in rural areas through remuneration to rural citizens for pool conservation. This remuneration is funded by developers who are having an impact on vernal pools in designated growth areas. This local in-lieu-fee program tailored to pools and run at the local level could not have developed without our strong citizen science programs and Maine’s culture of local participation in natural resources issues.

Reflecting on the iterative process of identifying challenges, building new knowledge, and adapting strategies, it is interesting to note that citizen science played an important role in negotiating the needs of decision makers at multiple governance levels. While federal- and state-level entities initially identified the problem, once lack of data and resources was identified as an issue and citizen science identified as possible solution, the process moved to the local level where scientists worked collaboratively with towns. Working with towns to train citizen scientists and collect data on privately owned lands, we identified larger planning issues and regulatory pushback that when translated back to the federal and state levels served to (re)initiate discussions on how to address emerging issues through research and better communication. Effective conservation is an adaptive and iterative process, and citizen science provided a pathway for addressing stakeholder needs and identifying new issues.

Building Social Capital for More-Adaptive Solutions

Cooper (2016: 11) defines social capital as “the social networks, cohesion, and individual investments in community that make democracy work better.” Building social capital by engaging the community can increase public support for conservation (Schwartz 2006).

Engaging partners in community-based projects may not only strengthen social capital, but also enhance 38

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scientific capacity and inclusiveness of local decision making (Whitelaw et al. 2003). At the same time, stakeholder engagement in citizen science varies widely.

Developing and sustaining programs that match different stakeholder needs in terms of type and degree of engagement is, therefore, a challenge.

General categories of citizen science occur along a continuum by degree of public participation outlined by Gray et al. (2017): • Contributory projects—usually scientist designed where the public is included mainly in data collection.

• Collaborative projects—structured by scientists where the public is provided opportunities to collaborate on project design and in data collection and analysis.

• Cocreated projects—more democratic partnerships where the public is actively engaged with all steps of the scientific process.

common concern. Working in the community allowed us to hear firsthand the reactions of different stakeholder communities to the vernal pool regulations and to consider their viewpoints and information needs as the project progressed. For example, we learned about more effective ways to communicate with different constituents (i.e., email and web networks, creation of fact sheets and streamlined data-collection forms) (Jansujwicz, Calhoun, and Lilieholm 2013). Channels open for communication changed over time from top down to jointly managed. As challenges increased, we changed the strategies for engaging stakeholders from gathering general information on pools and educating the public to providing base maps and static information to towns and landowners to a living-solutions action that provides economic benefits to citizens. This transition was well supported by prior engagements (and programs such as VIP and VPMAP) that engendered trust (Levesque, Calhoun, and Bell 2017).

Students and student-led research projects were critical for engaging stakeholders and sustaining their attention. Numerous students contributed to project continuity and exemplified our long-term human resource and financial investment in the local community and natural resources. VIP, VPMAP, and SAMP all used students to collect data and interact with stakeholders.

Students met with agencies, towns, and private landowners; their research topics were informed by stakeholder requests and ranged from detecting post-breeding movement patterns of blue-spotted salamanders to understanding private landowner perceptions of vernal pools. Although specific projects wrapped up and students graduated, the continuous influx of students and the staggering of research projects meant that there was a sustained boots-on-the-ground presence. For over

Like the majority of citizen science projects (Bonney et al. 2009), the VIP project falls squarely into this first category, VPMAP contains elements of the first and second categories as measured by the degree and nature of stakeholder engagement, and VP SAMP falls squarely into the third category. In reflecting on our engagement, we learned that as our model of citizen science transitioned from contributory to collaborative and cocreated, our stakeholder engagement became richer and more complex as challenges and solutions increased in complexity. In navigating this complexity with citizen science, important benefits emerged. This included stronger stakeholder relationships, new models of stakeholder-engaged student research, and a better understanding of stakeholder expectations and resultant policy implications (Table 1).

Table 1: Evolution of Vernal Pool Citizen Science, Research, and Policy The relationships

in Maine we developed with participants at local, Project Type Goal Research Policy state, and federal levels VIP Contributory Data collection Ecological Reactive were a notable benefit of Education our engagement with VPMAP Contributory/ Data collection Ecological/ Regulatory and citizen science. These Collaborative Human community-based Education projects provided a Dimensions Planning tools unique opportunity for (static map) us, as researchers, to VP SAMP Cocreated Planning tools Human-Natural Voluntary, local, work with various stake(local alternatives) Coupled Systems adaptive holders on an issue of MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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15 years, a cadre of dedicated graduate and undergraduate students waded through vernal pools with citizen scientists, met with landowners, participated in meetings with federal and state agencies and town planners, and attended legislative hearings in our state capital. We shared data collected and lessons learned with stakeholders and peers through personal connections, a userfriendly website, and academic papers. This model of student research attracted stakeholders from many different backgrounds and age groups in hands-on conservation in their own backyards and exposed students to interdisciplinary stakeholder-engaged research.

Through our work with federal, state, and local community stakeholders, we learned that groups and individuals had different reasons for engagement, levels of commitment, and expectations of the process and outcomes. This, in turn, made managing roles and expectations a challenge, particularly in communicating expectations related to workload and availability of outcome data (Jansujwicz, Calhoun, and Lilieholm 2013), but it also made the results deeper, richer, and ultimately, more resilient (McGreavy et al. 2016). We learned important lessons about difficulties with training citizen scientists and getting data back from them, with gaining access to private property, and with following up with participating landowners and towns after the significance data was collected. Continuous interaction with stakeholders enabled us to understand where process bottlenecks occurred and where better communication was needed. Stronger stakeholder relationships helped overcome obstacles and contributed to a stronger base of social and political capital that built the foundation for collaborative and cocreated projects.

NAVIGATING CHANGE AND FUTURE CITIZEN SCIENCE

I

f there is one constant in our experiences with citizen science and vernal pool conservation planning in Maine, it is change. Natural resources conservation is dynamic—new knowledge emerges, stakeholders’ needs change, and (in an ideal scenario) policies adapt. As our example illustrates, citizen science programs are similarly dynamic. Our community-based citizen science evolved slowly, continuously shaped by the influx of new ecological knowledge and stakeholder input. In the early iteration (VIP program), citizen science was used to support the development of science-based policies, particularly the vernal pool definition and rules. In

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the next phase (VPMAP), citizen science was used as a community-based strategy to navigate the challenge of regulating natural resources on private property. With VP SAMP, the foundation of the first two programs provided the social and political capital that allowed us to assemble a diverse stakeholder group familiar with VIP and VPMAP and vernal pool issues and that was committed to moving policy to local control.

Strong social capital was critical to the parallel evolution of our scientific research, citizen science, and vernal pool policy. Continuous, face-to-face, and hands-on interaction between our research team, community, and regulatory stakeholders created the trust and networks needed to get things done. Just as our work has, on a practical level, increasingly involved working with partners, on a theoretical level, much of it is increasingly framed in terms of “human-natural coupled systems.” One of the moves that conservation science has made is to conceive of, approach, and analyze conservation problems within this framework because natural systems often aren’t best studied alone.

Nature doesn’t exist in isolation. This framework points to the possibility that much is to be gained by recognizing that human systems and natural systems are interlinked. We have embedded our citizen science work within this broader framework. An important consequence is that the theory and practice of what we do is coordinated, thus allowing for science and action to move together in ways that have the potential to enhance both. And we are seeing this happening in how citizen science has created and sustained relationships and feedback loops in the science and policy process, leading to better on-the-ground outcomes for people and pools.

But there is more work to be done. As we transition into the next phase, we recognize that, despite notable advances, our research is not having the impact it could and should have on the local community. New approaches are needed to empower communities and encourage citizens to engage not only in data collection, but also in processing, analyzing, and applying new information (Kennedy 2016). Excited about the role citizen science can play in this transition, our team is turning attention to the use of technology as a way to support increased usability and timing of data collection and sharing so that stakeholders receive the information they need when they need it in a form they can use it.

Leveraging technology to increase responsiveness (in collaboration with stakeholders) will better support 40

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planning in a rapidly changing ecological, social, and political environment and may ultimately bring us closer to bridging the science-policy gap in natural resources conservation. REFERENCES Baldwin, Robert F., and Phillip G. deMaynadier. 2009.

“Assessing Threats to Pool-breeding Amphibian Habitat in an Urbanizing Landscape.” Biological Conservation 142(8): 1628–1638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2009.02.039 Baldwin, Robert F., Aram J.K. Calhoun, and Phillip G. deMaynadier. 2006a. “The Significance of Hydroperiod and Stand Maturity for Pool-breeding Amphibians in Forested Landscapes.” Canadian Journal of Zoology 84:1604–1615.

Baldwin, Robert F., Aram J.K. Calhoun, and Phillip G. deMaynadier. 2006b. “Conservation Planning for Amphibian Species with Complex Habitat Requirements: A Case Study Using Movements and Habitat Selection of the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica).”

Journal of Herpetology 40: 442–454.

Bonney, Rick, Caren B. Cooper, Janis Dickinson, Steve Kelling, Tina Phillips, Kenneth V. Rosenberg, and Jennifer Shirk. 2009. “Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy.” BioScience 59:977–984.

Calhoun, Aram J.K. 2003. Maine Citizen’s Guide to Locating and Documenting Vernal Pools. Maine Audubon Society, Falmouth.

Calhoun, Aram J.K., and Phillip G. deMaynadier, eds.

2008. Science and Conservation of Vernal Pools in the Northeastern United States. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. Calhoun, Aram J.K., Jessica S. Jansujwicz, Kathleen P. Bell, and Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. 2014. “Improving Management of Small Natural Features on Private Lands by Negotiating the Science–Policy Boundary for Maine Vernal Pools.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(30): 11002–11006. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1323606111 Calhoun, Aram J.K., Tracey E. Walls, Mark McCollough, and Sally S. Stockwell. 2003. “Developing Conservation Strategies for Vernal Pools: A Maine Case Study.”

Wetlands 23:70–81.

Clark, William C., Lorrae van Kerkhoff, Louis Lebel, and Gilberto C. Gallopin. 2016. “Crafting Usable Knowledge for Sustainable Development.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(7): 4570–4578.

Cohen, Matthew J., Irena F. Creed, Laurie Alexander, Nandita B. Basu, Aram J.K. Calhoun, Christopher Craft, Ellen D’Amico, et al. 2016. “Do Geographically Isolated Wetlands Influence Landscape Functions? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113:1978–1986.

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Cooper, Caren. 2016. Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery. The Overlook Press, New York.

DiBello, Fred J., Aram J.K. Calhoun, Dawn E. Morgan, and Amanda F. Shearin. 2016. “Efficiency and Detection Accuracy Using Print and Digital Stereo Aerial Photography for Remotely Mapping Vernal Pools in New England Landscapes.” Wetlands 36:505–514.

Fox, Helen E., Caroline Christian, J. Cully Nordby, Oliver R.W. Pergams, Garry D. Peterson, and Christopher R. Pyke. 2006. “Perceived Barriers to Integrating Social Science and Conservation.” Conservation Biology 20(6): 1817–1820.

Gray, Steven, Rebecca Jordan, Alycia Crall, Greg Newman, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, Joey Huang, Whitney Novak, et al.

2017. “Combining Participatory Modeling and Citizen Science to Support Voluntary Conservation Action.”

Biological Conservation 208:76–86.

Hall, John A., and Erica Fleishman. 2009. “Demonstration as a Means to Translate Conservation Science into Practice.” Conservation Biology 24(1): 120–127.

Hunter Jr., Malcolm L., Vicenç Acuña, Dana M. Bauer, Kathleen P. Bell, Aram J.K. Calhoun, Maria R. FelipeLucia, James A. Fitzsimons, et al. 2017. “Conserving Small Natural Features with Large Ecological Roles: A Synthetic Overview. Biological Conservation 211:88–95.

Irwin, Alan. 1995. Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise, and Sustainable Development. Routledge, London.

Jansujwicz, Jessica S., and Aram J.K. Calhoun. 2010.

“Protecting Natural Resources on Private Land.” In Landscape-Scale Conservation Planning, edited by Stephen C. Trombulak and Robert Baldwin, 205–233.

Springer, New York.

Jansujwicz, Jessica S., Aram J.K. Calhoun, Jessica E. Leahy, and Robert J. Lilieholm. 2013. “Using Mixed Methods to Develop a Frame-based Private Landowner Typology.”

Society and Natural Resources 26:945–961.

Jansujwicz, Jessica S., Aram J.K. Calhoun, and Robert J. Lilieholm. 2013. “The Maine Vernal Pool Mapping and Assessment Program: Engaging Municipal Officials and Private Landowners in Community-based Citizen Science. Environmental Management 52(6): 1369–1385.

Joyal, Lisa A., Mark McCollough, and Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. 2001. “Landscape Ecology Approaches to Wetland Species Conservation: A Case Study of Two Turtle Species in Southern Maine.” Conservation Biology 15:1755–1762.

Kennedy, Eric B. 2016. “When Citizen Science Meets Science Policy.” In The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science, edited by Darlene Cavalier and Eric B. Kennedy, 21–50. Consortium for Science, Policy, & Outcomes, Tempe, AZ.

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Knight, Andrew, Richard M. Cowling, Mathieu Rouget, Andrew Balmford, Amanda T. Lombard, and Bruce M. Campbell. 2008. “Knowing But Not Doing: Selecting Priority Conservation Areas and the ResearchImplementation Gap.” Conservation Biology 22(3): 610–617.

Levesque, Vanessa R., Kathleen P. Bell, and Aram J.K. Calhoun. 2016. “Planning for Sustainability in Small Municipalities: The Influence of Interest Groups, Growth Patterns, and Institutional Characteristics.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 37:322–333. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X16655601 Levesque, Vanessa R., Aram J.K. Calhoun, Kathleen P. Bell, and Teresa R. Johnson. 2017. “Turning Contention into Collaboration: Engaging Power, Trust, and Learning in Collaborative Networks.” Society & Natural Resources 30:245–260. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080 /08941920.2016.1180726 Lichko, Lesley E., and Aram J.K. Calhoun. 2003. “An Evolution of Vernal Pool Creation Projects in New England: Project Documentation from 1991–2000.”

Environmental Management 32:141–151.

Mahaney Wende S., and Michael W. Klemens. 2008.

“Vernal Pool Conservation Policy: The Federal, State, and Local Context.” In Science and Conservation of Vernal Pool in Northeastern North America, edited by Aram J.K. Calhoun and Phillip G. deMaynadier, 193–212. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. McGreavy, Bridie, Aram J.K. Calhoun, Jessica Jansujwicz, and Vanessa Levesque. 2016. “Citizen Science and Natural Resource Governance: Program Design for Vernal Pool Policy Innovation.” Ecology and Society 21(2): 48. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08437-210248 Meffee, Gary K., David Ehrenfeld, and Reed F. Noss. 2006.

“Conservation Biology at Twenty.” Conservation Biology 20(3): 595–596.

Oscarson, Damon B., and Aram J.K. Calhoun. 2007.

“Developing Vernal Pool Conservation Plans at the Local Level Using Citizen-Scientists.” Wetlands 27(1): 80–95.

Patrick, David A., Aram J.K. Calhoun, Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. 2007. “The Orientation of Juvenile Wood Frogs, Rana sylvatica, Leaving Experimental Ponds.” Journal of Herpetology 41:158–163.

Vasconcelos, Daniel, and Aram J.K. Calhoun. 2004.

“Movement Patterns of Adult and Juvenile Wood Frogs (Rana sylvatica) and Spotted Salamanders (Abystoma maculatum) in Three Restored Vernal Pools.” Journal of Herpetology 38:551–561.

Vasconcelos, Daniel, and Aram J.K. Calhoun. 2006.

“Monitoring Created Seasonal Pools for Functional Success: A Six-Year Case Study of Amphibian Responses, Sears Island, Maine, USA.” Wetlands 26:992–1003.

Whitelaw, Graham, Hague Vaughan, Brian Craig, and David Atkinson. 2003. “Establishing the Canadian Community Monitoring Network.” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 88:409–418.

Jessica Spelke Jansujwicz is a research assistant professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology at the University of Maine and faculty fellow at the George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

Her research focuses on the human dimensions of natural resources, with an emphasis on stakeholder engagement in conservation planning.

Aram J. K. Calhoun is a professor of wetland ecology in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology. Her research focuses on forested wetlands and vernal pool ecosystems. She is particularly interested in conservation of natural resources on private lands and collaborative approaches to conserving wetlands. Calhoun is active in working at all levels of government on wetland policy and conservation issues.

Reyers, Belinda, Dirk J. Roux, Richard M. Cowling, Aimee Ginsburg, Jeanne L. Nel, and Patrick O’Farrell. 2010.

“Conservation Planning as a Transdisciplinary Process.”

Conservation Biology 24(4): 957–965.

Schwartz, Mark W. 2006. “How Conservation Scientists Can Help Develop Social Capital for Biodiversity.”

Conservation Biology 20:1150–1552.

Silka, Linda. 2017. “Reflections: Why Doesn’t Science Get Used? The Upcoming Focus on Citizen Science.” Maine Policy Review 26(1): 91.

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MAINE BUMBLE BEE ATLAS

Documenting the Diversity, Distribution, and Status of Maine Bumble Bees: The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas and Citizen Scientists

by Kalyn Bickerman-Martens, Beth Swartz, Ron Butler, and Frank Drummond

et al. 2011; Corbet, Williams, and Osborne 1991; Drummond 2016; The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas (MBBA) is a multiyear (2015–2019) citizen science projGrixti et al. 2009). ect coordinated by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) in There are 250 species of bumble bees worldwide, 17 of which have partnership with the University of Maine. The project’s goals are to increase scientific been known to occur historically in knowledge of Maine’s bumble bee fauna and raise public appreciation for native pollinaMaine (http://explorer.natureserve tors and their conservation. Project partners accomplish these goals by training citizen .org; Dibble et al. in press). Because scientists to conduct surveys statewide using standardized data-collection methods and there is little comparable historical by providing outreach to both project volunteers and the public on bumble bees and baseline data, however, researchers native pollinator conservation. During the project’s first three years, 230 volunteers have currently know little about the been trained to participate in MBBA at six workshops held across the state. As of the status of native bumble bee populaend of the second field season, MBBA citizen scientists have documented over 10,300 tions in the United States. But in species records in nearly 500 townships statewide. These data have already made a the last few decades, researchers valuable contribution to species status assessments conducted by MDIFW and the US have observed population declines Fish and Wildlife Service. MBBA staff also maintain a website, Facebook page, and blog in bumble bee species throughout to keep volunteers and the public informed about the project and raise awareness of, the country (Cameron et al. 2011; Grixti et al. 2009). In fact, in March and support for, native pollinator conservation.

2017, the rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) became the first bumble bee protected under the US BACKGROUND Endangered Species Act (ESA).1 Once abundant and widespread across the East, Midwest, and southern esearchers estimate that 87 percent of the flowering Canada (Szymanski et al. 2016), there has been a nearly plants in the world—wild plants and agricultural 90 percent decline in both numbers and range extent of crops alike—rely on animals for pollination (Bartomeus the rusty-patched bumble bee since the late 1990s et al. 2013; Ollerton et al. 2011). In the United States, (Cameron et al. 2011). This species has not been the value of insect-mediated pollination, including that observed in Maine for nearly a decade. provided by native bees, is around $60 billion (Losey A second Maine native, the yellow-banded bumble and Vaughn 2006). In Maine, native insects such as bee (Bombus terricola), has also experienced signifibumble bees provide valuable pollination services. With cant declines throughout its range. Once commonly their large, furry bodies and ability to generate body found from the Northeast, along the Eastern Seaboard, heat, bumble bees are well adapted to our temperate and across the Midwest through western Canada, climate and can forage in cooler air temperatures than scientists believe this species has declined by approxithe introduced honey bee (Heinrich 1979; Jones et al. mately 50 percent (Colla and Packer 2008). In 2017, 2014). Bumble bees are also valued for their distinctive the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) initiated a buzz-pollination—a technique that is important in the comprehensive status review to assess if the yellowpollination of Maine’s lowbush blueberry crop (Cameron banded bumble bee also warranted listing under the Abstract

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Above: Bombus impatiens, the common eastern bumble bee [Photos: Ron Butler], Below: Bombus terricola, the yellow-banded bumble bee [Photos: Pat Hinds].

federal ESA.2 Fortunately for Maine, the yellowbanded bumble bee continues to be found in low numbers throughout the state.

Several factors may be contributing to the declines in bumble bee populations: habitat alteration and fragmentation; loss of food resources though intensive land management practices; pesticides; and diseases and parasites introduced through widespread use of commercially raised bumble bees (Schweitzer et al.

2010). Although we know these declines have occurred in Maine, the state’s lack of comprehensive statewide MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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occurrence data on bumble bees meant that MDIFW did not have the ability to confidently assess bumble bee species status and trends. Between 1864 and 2015, only about 1,300 bumble bee records had been documented in the state, many of which were recorded around the universities, particularly Orono, as well as more populated areas, leaving much of Maine’s diverse landscape underrepresented.

To address the need for current and comprehensive data on Maine’s bumble bee fauna, MDIFW partnered with the University of Maine and the University of Maine at Farmington in 2014 to initiate the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas (MBBA).

MBBA was designed as a multiyear (2015– 2019), statewide survey of bumble bees using trained citizen scientists with two main project objectives:

• Increase scientific knowledge of the diversity, distribution, and conservation status of Maine’s bumble bees.

• Raise public awareness of native pollinators and their conservation.

There are several benefits to using citizen scientists in such projects. The use of trained citizens greatly reinforces the effectiveness of limited state agency staff and resources for a comprehensive, statewide survey. By increasing the number of people participating in the 44

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bumble bee surveys, we improve the chances of finding a rare species and are able to collect finer-scale data on a landscape scale. Finally, people who participate in a citizen science project—an example of experiential education—learn through the action of participating in training workshops and surveys, which enhances their interest in, and support for, pollinator conservation (Brossard, Lewenstein, and Bonney 2005). A rewarding experience often leads participants to volunteer for additional citizen science projects, which generates a valuable pool of trained individuals for future conservation initiatives.

The MDIFW has a history of successfully using citizen scientists to assist with wildlife biodiversity projects, including two recent invertebrate surveys: the Maine Butterfly Survey (MBS) (2008–2016) and Maine Dragonfly and Damselfly Survey (MDDS) (1999– 2005). Volunteers for MBS contributed more than 23,000 butterfly records, 10 of which were new state species records and 1 of which was a new US species record (MDIFW unpublished data). During the active years of MDDS, citizen scientists contributed 3,000– 4,000 records annually for a total of more than 17,000 dragonfly and damselfly records submitted, with 10 new state species records and 2 new US species records (Brunelle and deMaynadier 2005). MBBA was modeled after these successful projects, with the intent of creating a partnership between professional and citizen scientists to survey Maine’s bumble bee fauna and document diversity, abundance, and habitat use.

The seed for the MBBA was planted in 2012 by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies’ two-year Vermont Bumble Bee Survey, which documented the distribution and status of bumble bees in that state. During that survey, over 10,000 bumble bee records of 12 species were collected. In 2013, NatureServe provided training in bumble bee identification and monitoring to northeastern state fish and wildlife agencies and showcased the successful Vermont Bumble Bee Survey (https:// vtecostudies.org/wildlife/insects/bumble-bees/). This alliance built a foundation for MDIFW from which the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas was a next step.

HOW THE MAINE BUMBLE BEE ATLAS WORKS

W

e began the first stage of volunteer recruitment for MBBA in the spring of 2015 with the announcement of two training workshops. The MDIFW issued a press release, which was picked up by local news

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organizations (Maine Public Broadcasting Network, Portland Press Herald, among others) and was also emailed to former MBS and MDDS participants, as well as members of the Maine Entomological Society.

We created a website so potential volunteers could learn more about the project and how to participate. The website also serves as the primary vehicle for providing resources to project participants, as well as communicating project results and pollinator outreach to the public. A project Facebook page and blog serve as additional outreach tools.­3

By increasing the number of people participating in the bumble bee surveys, we improve the chances of finding a rare species and are able to collect finer-scale data on a landscape scale.

All participants need to attend a volunteer-training workshop to participate in MBBA. Daylong workshops are limited to 40 to 50 people. The first half of the day is focused on bumble bee life history, biology, and conservation. After an hour-long lunch break, the afternoon session presents information on the project’s methods and protocols, followed by a demonstration on how to pin insects and the distribution of participants’ collecting supplies. Although the preferred collection method requires volunteers to kill and pin the bumble bees they document, we also give volunteers the choice to participate through a catch-and-release method using photography. Participants are encouraged to begin documenting bumble bees soon after the workshop and continue through the fall until the last bumble bees are seen foraging. Participants drop off their pinned collections at their local Cooperative Extension offices and submit photographs via email and DropBox. Two training workshops have been held in the spring of each year since 2015, for a total of six workshops so far, and 230 volunteers have been trained through the 2017 season. Acknowledging that volunteers are most likely to survey near where they live, we 45

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attempted to schedule training workshops in different areas of Maine to train people from diverse regions.

Workshop locations have included Orono, Gorham, and Houlton, Maine.

In addition to the training workshops, MBBA staff also offered bumble bee identification workshops to participants in 2016 and 2017. Although volunteers are not required to identify their collections, and all collections are sent to a project partner for identification, many participants are curious about this aspect of the project. Identification workshops are half-day events and include presentations on methods and tools for identifying bumble bees followed by time for attendees to practice their skills using microscopes. Volunteers are encouraged to bring their own collections, but samples of several species are provided.

By the end of 2016, more than 2,430 individual sites visits have been conducted at 1,304 sites in nearly 500 Maine townships from all 16 counties.

PREWORKSHOP SURVEY FOR VOLUNTEERS

A

t the beginning of each training workshop in 2015 and 2016, we surveyed the participants to assess their demographics and previous knowledge about bumble bees and to ascertain how many had previously participated in citizen science projects. The survey was optional and participants remained anonymous. From the 230 trained volunteers, we received 145 completed surveys. We found that a little over half of survey respondents (52 percent) had volunteered previously for a citizen science project such as MBS or MDDS, and 14 percent were members of the Maine Entomological Society. Additionally, nearly 92 percent of volunteers who responded had completed at least an associate’s degree, and 9 percent of those held doctorates. Most workshop attendees (~62 percent) were at least 51 years old while only 12 percent were less than 31 years old.

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We included questions about participants’ previous knowledge about bumble bees and pollinators to measure the learning outcomes for our citizen scientists.

More than 95 percent of respondents had previously heard of colony collapse disorder (CCD) in honey bees, which was not surprising given the media attention in recent years. Volunteers answered approximately 50 percent of the general knowledge questions about bumble bees correctly, such as knowing there are 10 to 20 bumble bee species in Maine (80 percent) and that bumble bees are capable of delivering a sting (78 percent). This suggests they were generally well informed before the workshop. Fewer volunteers correctly answered that workers and queens were the ones that collect pollen for the colonies (45 percent) or that bumble bees buzz-pollinate (46 percent).

When presented with the names, both scientific and common, of five bumble bee species and asked to choose which species was possibly extirpated from Maine, the majority (78 percent) chose “not sure;” only 20 percent of respondents correctly chose the rustypatched bumble bee. These surveys were conducted in 2015 and 2016, before the listing of the rusty-patched bumble bee under the ESA and before there was a significant amount of media attention on the species.

Volunteers were also asked if the honey bee (Apis mellifera), introduced to North America from Europe in the seventeenth century, was a native species to the United States. Approximately 61 percent correctly responded that it was not a native species; only 7 percent thought that it was native.

We also asked the volunteer citizen scientists to list possible threats to bumble bee species in Maine. The top responses were chemicals and pesticides (91 percent), habitat loss (60 percent), climate change (29 percent), and parasites and diseases (25 percent).

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED SO FAR

T

he Maine Bumble Bee Atlas is designed to have five years of citizen science contributions. As of August 2017, we have completed three years of volunteer-training workshops and are in the middle of our third season of bumble bee surveys. In 2015, approximately 4,500 bumble bee records were contributed to the project (specimens and photo vouchers), and in 2016, we received around 5,800 records, for a total of approximately 10,300 records for the first two years

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of the project. By the end of 2016, more than 2,430 individual sites visits have been conducted at 1,304 sites in nearly 500 Maine townships from all 16 counties.

Fifty-six percent of our trained citizen scientists have contributed data to the project thus far.

Figure 1 is a comparison of bumble bee species distribution records in Maine from before MBBA began (1864–2013) and records collected for MBBA (2014 and 2016). Some records were collected in 2014 before the official start of the project. The maps clearly show how many more townships in Maine we have been able to reach using citizen scientists in just two years as compared to historical collections. The maps also show where there are gaps (e.g., western mountains, north, Downeast) that we can target during later stages of MBBA.

Figure 1:

THE FUTURE OF THE MAINE BUMBLE BEE ATLAS

R

esults from MBBA have already contributed to USFWS species status assessments for the rustypatched and yellow-banded bumble bees. As we enter the final two years (2018–2019) of MBBA, we hope to focus on and encourage collections in undersurveyed parts of the state so we have comprehensive, statewide species diversity and distribution data. One way we hope to increase participation in less surveyed areas is to hold our 2018 and 2019 training workshops in regions where we have received fewer vouchers. Another idea is to get in touch with organizations, such as conservation associations, libraries, and schools, in those areas to give public informational talks that may pique interest

Historical Species Distribution Map (Left) Compared to Species Records Collected for MBAA from 2014 to 2016 (Right)

pre-MBBR (1864–2013) Confirmed Species

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No Records 1 2–3 4–6 7–9 10–12

MBBR (2014–2016) Confirmed Species

No Records 1 2–3 4–6 7–9 10–12

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in MBBA. Finally, although we do announcements for workshops through larger publications like the Bangor Daily News and the Portland Press Herald, a targeted series of articles in local publications may be more effective for these areas.

These data will be invaluable to MDIFW and its partners, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service, in assessing the status and conservation needs of all of Maine’s bumble bee species and in promoting support for bumblebees and other native pollinators. In addition, we hope that the efforts put forth through the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas will spawn other related projects such as the Maine Pollinator Study being conducted by the Maine Department of Transportation and the Maine Island Bumble Bee Survey conducted by Bowdoin College. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas is funded by grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (State Wildlife Grant Program), the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund (www.maine.gov/ifw/MOHF.html), and by contributions to the Maine Endangered & Nongame Wildlife Fund (Chickadee Check-off, Loon License Plate), and in-kind staff time contributions from the University of Maine.

ENDNOTES 1. More information is available on the USFWS website https://www.fws.gov/midwest/endangered/insects/rpbb/ 2. More information on the status review for the yellowbanded bumble bee is available at the USFWS website https://www.fws.gov/midwest/es/soc /Batch90DayMarch2016.html 3. Maine Bumble Bee Atlas website: http://mainebumblebeeatlas.umf.maine.edu/ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com /MaineBumblebeeAtlas/ and blog: http://www.maine.gov/wordpress/bumblebeeatlas/ REFERENCES Bartomeus, Ignasi, John S. Ascher, Jason Gibbs, Bryan N. Danforth, David L. Wagner, Shannon M. Hedtke, and Rachel Winfree. 2013. “Historical Changes in Northeastern US Bee Pollinators Related to Shared Ecological Traits.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(12): 4656–4660.

Brossard, Dominique, Bruce Lewenstein, and Rick Bonney.

2005. “Scientific Knowledge and Attitude Change: The Impact of a Citizen Science Project.” International Journal of Science Education 27(9): 1099–1121.

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Brunelle, Paul-Michael, and Phillip deMaynadier. 2005. The Maine Dragonfly and Damselfly Survey: A Final Report.

Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Bangor.

Cameron, Sydney A., Jeffrey D. Lozier, James P. Strange, Jonathan B. Koch, Nils Cordes, Leellen F. Solter, and Terry L. Griswold. 2011. “Patterns of Widespread Decline in North American Bumble Bees.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108(2): 662–667.

Colla, Sheila R., and Laurence Packer. 2008. “Evidence for Decline in Eastern North American Bumblebees (Hymenoptera: Apidae), with Special Focus on Bombus affinis Cresson.” Biodiversity and Conservation 17(6): 1379–1391.

Corbet, Sarah A., Ingrid H. Williams, and Juliet L. Osborne.

1991. “Bees and the Pollination of Crops and Wild Flowers in the European Community.” Bee World 72(2): 47–59.

Dibble, Alison, Francis A. Drummond, Connie Stubbs, John Ascher, and Michael Veit. In press. “Bees of Maine with a State Species Checklist.” Northeastern Naturalist.

Drummond, Francis A. 2016. “Behavior of Bees Associated with the Wild Blueberry Agro-ecosystem in the USA.” International Journal of Entomology and Nematology 2(1): 27–41.

Grixti, Jennifer C., Lisa T. Wong, Sydney A. Cameron, and Colin Favret. 2009. “Decline of Bumble Bees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest.” Biological Conservation 142(1): 75–84.

Heinrich, Bernd. 1979. Bumblebee Economics. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Jones, Matthew S., Henri Vanhanen, Rainer Peltola, and Frank Drummond. 2014. “A Global Review of Arthropod-mediated Ecosystem-Services in Vaccinium Berry Agroecosystems.” Terrestrial Arthropod Reviews 7(1): 41–78.

Losey, John E., and Mace Vaughn. 2006. “The Economic Value of Ecological Services Provided by Insects.”

BioScience 56(4): 311–323.

Ollerton, Jeff, Rachel Winfree, and Sam Tarrant. 2011. “How Many Flowering Plants Are Pollinated by Animals?”

Oikos 120(3): 321–326.

Schweitzer, Dale F., Nicole A. Capuano, Bruce E. Young, and Sheila R. Colla. 2010. Conservation and Management of North American Bumble Bees. NatureServe, Arlington, VA, and USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC. Szymanski, Jennifer, Tamara Smith, Andrew Horton, Mary Parkin, Laura Ragan, Gregg Masson, Erik Olson, et al.

2016. Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis) Species Status Assessment. Final Report, USFWS, Midwest Region. https://www.fws.gov/midwest /endangered/insects/rpbb/pdf/SSAReportRPBBwAdd.pdf

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Kalyn Bickerman-Martens is a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and environmental sciences at the University of Maine. Her work focuses on the health of Maine’s native bumble bees in wild blueberry fields and her research interests include parasitology, disease ecology, toxicology, and citizen science and science communication.

Beth Swartz is a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and coordinator for the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas. She serves as the department’s lead biologist on a wide range of invertebrate taxa, with recent efforts devoted to assessment and conservation of the Clayton’s copper butterfly, rare freshwater mussels, rare mayflies, and bumble bees.

Ron Butler is a professor of biology at the University of Maine at Farmington, with research interests in behavioral ecology, community ecology, and conservation biology. During the past 30 years, he has worked on a variety of projects concerning the ecology and conservation of seabirds, dragonflies, butterflies, and native pollinators. Butler helps coordinate three statewide citizen scientist initiatives: the Maine Damselfly and Dragonfly Survey, the Maine Butterfly Survey, and the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas.

Frank Drummond is a professor of insect ecology at the University of Maine. His training is in botany, entomology, and quantitative ecology. He has researched wild blueberry pest management, pollination, bee biology, blueberry genetics, blueberry physiological ecology, flower cold tolerance, and food safety microbiology and its relationship to dung beetle diversity. His latest research project assesses means of enhancing roadsides to increase plant and pollinator diversity.

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Collecting Data on Charismatic Mini-Fauna: Public Participation and the Dragonfly Mercury Project

by Colleen Flanagan Pritz and Sarah J. Nelson

Considered alongside its watery reality and copious countenances, the creature has a cult-like following.

The Dragonfly Mercury Project (DMP) engages citizen scientists in collection of dragThe mere mention of the word dragonfly larvae for mercury analysis in national parks, allowing for national-scale assessonfly gets people jazzed about ment of this neurotoxic pollutant. DMP goals for citizen scientist engagement are to citizen science. The Dragonfly (1) provide opportunity for biodiversity discovery; (2) connect people to parks; and (3) Mercury Project (DMP) builds on provide a vehicle for mercury education and outreach. Over 90 parks and 3,000 citizen the overall panache of the dragonfly. scientists have participated in the project. Here we summarize information about citizen It is an excellent example of a sciengroups who participated in 2014–2016. High school students (20%), interns and youth tific, educational, and experiential groups (24%), and local community groups (15%) comprised the majority of participartnership that brings together pants. Park liaisons reported that the project achieved internal and external communicagovernment and academic scientists, tion that otherwise would not have occurred. Opportunities for improvement included land managers, and public particifurther curriculum and workforce development. Ultimately, citizen scientists gained new pants of all ages. Goals of the project are to increase the understanding of perspectives and practiced civic skills while project scientists and resource managers mercury contamination in national gained data and insights on mercury in foodwebs. parks across the United States and to engage citizen scientists in the collection of dragonfly larvae.

BACKGROUND Mercury is a global pollutant that is highly toxic to animals and humans, and mercury levels in dragonfly hile scouring a local stream, carefully and larvae serve as an indicator of wildlife health. cautiously, in search of the great larval “toothed To achieve these goals, the scientist team at the one” on behalf of the Dragonfly Mercury Project, a University of Maine (UMaine), US Geological Survey student exclaims, “I didn’t know dragonflies lived (USGS), and National Park Service (NPS) enlists a underwater!” Oftentimes observations of underwater liaison within each national park or partner within the inhabitants focus only on other mini-fauna like fish and community. The liaison then coordinates, trains, and tadpoles, or perhaps distant cousins of the dragonfly like leads citizen scientists in actively collecting samples of the water strider or backswimmer. dragonfly larvae from waters within the parks and sends Well, larval dragonflies can live up to seven to nine them to laboratories at USGS and Dartmouth College, years underwater, before emerging as energetic, flying where they are analyzed for mercury. The results provide adults with flashy colors. What may be even more fasciscientists and land managers data regarding the distribunating than its underwater existence and aerial acrobatics tion of mercury at broad spatial scales. The data are also is that these insects have been around since the dinosaurs available for citizen scientists to use in the classroom for lived on earth. That’s a staggering 300 million years. And, science projects or lesson plans (Nelson, Webber, and while modern dragonflies have wingspans of two to five Flanagan Pritz 2015). inches, fossil dragonflies have been found with wingSince 2013, more than 2,500 citizen scientists in spans of up to two feet—that’s roughly the wingspan of over 90 US national parks from Alaska to Florida and the present-day American kestrel, a bird of prey. In its from California to Maine have contributed beyond spiritual existence, the dragonfly often symbolizes the 10,000 hours and collected close to 7,500 dragonfly wisdom of transformation and adaptability in life. larvae for the Dragonfly Mercury Project. Maine— Abstract

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Photo: A. Anderson, Kingfisher Photography for Acadia Learning

where the project has its deeply entrenched roots—is just 1 of 42 states with NPS units contributing samples to the study. The broad geographic coverage of this science is possible because of the participation of citizen scientists. Public participants range from middle school– and college–aged students to families and retirees (Eagles-Smith et al. 2016).

In remote places like Maine and remote landscapes like national parks, mercury is generally delivered via atmospheric deposition (e.g., rain, snow, dust). After being emitted to the air, mercury often undergoes longrange transport. Because mercury bioaccumulates in tissues of living animals and biomagnifies up food webs, reaching concentrations that can have toxic effects, it threatens the very resources that the NPS is mandated to protect (Flanagan Pritz, Nelson, and Eagles-Smith 2014). In particular, the NPS Organic Act (54 U.S.C. 100101 et seq.) of 1916 directs the NPS to promote and regulate the use of the “national parks… which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same… as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Because fish occur across a wide geography and provide strong links to human and wildlife health, they are perhaps the most commonly used indicator for

Aeshnidae dragonfly larvae exuviae (their shed exoskeletons), which look just like the larvae.

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mercury contamination. But dragonfly larvae are easier to collect than fish and easier to identify relative to other aquatic insects. Furthermore, dragonfly larvae are ubiquitous, an important prey item, and due to their position on the food chain, more likely than other mini-fauna to bioaccumulate pollutants such as mercury at ecologically relevant concentrations. They also represent the risk from mercury in fishless ecosystems such as shallow ponds and pools—some of the most productive and ecologically important aquatic habitats. The larvae remain in the pond or stream where they hatched from eggs, giving researchers and managers a clearer picture of mercury risk within the watershed where they are caught (Nelson, Webber, and Flanagan Pritz 2015).

The DMP began in 2011 with four national parks.

By 2016—the centennial year of the National Park Service—it had multiplied in size to include more than 80 NPS units. The citizen science aspects of the DMP grew from UMaine efforts to develop curricula regarding mercury around local schools in Maine (Zoellick, Nelson, and Schauffler 2012; see Lindsey this issue) and builds on an extensive set of curricula, videos, and interpretive materials available on the project website (http://go.nps.gov/dragonflymercury/). The expansion of the DMP since its inception has generated considerable interest nationally and provides valuable services to the scientific community, parks, and public participants. The train-the-trainer approach ensures that the on-site liaison oversees sampling and provision of training materials and ensures that samples are collected by citizen scientists following strict protocols to avoid contamination.

STUDY

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he DMP goals for citizen scientist engagement are to (1) provide an opportunity for biodiversity discovery; (2) connect people to parks; and (3) provide a vehicle for education and outreach regarding mercury.

Entering its eighth field season in 2018, the DMP seeks to better connect with the citizen scientists who make this work possible and to improve project implementation. Therefore, we interviewed park liaisons and synthesized results, hoping to enhance the DMP’s educational opportunities and increase data relevance among the public audience. From 2013 to 2016, the DMP team spoke with park and partner citizen scientist leaders, covering over 100 sampling expeditions across 77 national parks, involving more than 3,200 citizen 51

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scientists who typically contribute 4 hours each to the DMP. Questions asked included (1) What was one thing that most surprised you about the project? and (2) Do you have suggestions for improvement? (Nelson et al. 2017).

The majority of citizen scientist participants were lumped into three main categories based on the interview results: high school students (20 percent), interns and youth groups (24 percent), and local community groups (15 percent) (Figure 1). In the following paragraphs, we discuss noteworthy surprises for each group in the form of challenges, successes, and opportunities.

Regardless of the group type, time and effort can present challenges when establishing a relationship with a group new to the park or setting up new visitor programs. Specific challenges expressed by park liaisons who led groups of high school students included the lack of a platform or mechanism to share resources that

teachers have developed, with many requesting curriculum and data analysis tools. Additionally, the time of involvement presented a challenge for the intern, youth, and local community groups because most often the interaction was brief and may be only a one-time occurrence. Ultimately, the shortened interface affects the level of engagement and can limit overall participation, accountability, and commitment.

In contrast, the level of engagement of the groups of high school students was considered a success. Park liaisons noted that the students truly enjoyed and were interested in the project. (It can be generally assumed that the total interaction time with high school groups is higher than with the other groups.) Intern groups reported viewing this field-based project as a reward and reprieve from indoor work. For other interns and youth groups, the project helped identify interests and a career path. Moreover, park liaisons who led local community groups revealed that the project achieved both internal and external communication that otherFigure 1: Wheel Representation of Citizen Scientist wise would not have occurred. For example,

Groups Participating in the Dragonfly many parks linked with local experts to assist

Mercury Project, 2013–2016 with fieldwork and identification, and park staff learned from others within the park who had specific expertise (e.g., entomology).

Lastly, the interviews showed us many areas that could be improved. We learned that the High school classes / Other facilitation of community of practice for teachers students and emphasis on existing data literacy and curricTRTs ulum resources would greatly benefit the high Girl Scouts / school teacher and student group. For interns Boy Scouts and youth groups, the DMP should create a plan Local for workforce development and better link career conservation / DMP paths with these participants. We were largely naturalist groups University Citizen unaware how many local community groups students, interns, Scientists faculty SCA intern exist, and therefore we need to continue faciligroups 2013 – 2016 tating connections with such groups.

In Maine alone, expanded sampling plans at Interns: GIP, Mosaics, Acadia National Park allowed for multiple citizen YCC & other TNC, park science expeditions, with over 660 participants youth Visitor during 2013–2016, thereby diversifying the programs programs interview results. Due to the large number of Middle Local contributors, the DMP at Acadia reached a school or park classes volunteers variety of audience types (from middle school students to families to retirees), enabling sampling events to occur at several sites within one park and at different habitat types (stream, Abbreviations: TRT = Teacher Ranger Teacher; SCA = Student Conservation pond, lake). Highlights included the engageAssociation; YCC = Youth Conservation Corps; GIP = Geoscientists in Parks; ment of different groups such as middle school TNC = The Nature Conservancy.

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Photo: S. Nelson

students, who gained hands-on skills, and passing visitors at Jordan Pond, who interacted with the study in a quick but meaningful way. Scientifically, this large pool of participants generated both an increase of statistical power and evaluation of temporal variability of mercury concentrations in dragonfly larvae.

Overall findings indicate that deep engagement in biodiversity discovery was an overwhelmingly important aspect of the project, with several participants citing “getting kids outdoors” as a highlight of the program. Feedback indicated that the optimal group size varied by park and group type, but generally about 15 people per sample site per sampling event appeared to be ideal. Given earlier comments from parks, we are restructuring the DMP to streamline coordination and speed up the distribution of data to parks. Parks explicitly expressed an interest in sharing data with citizens before the teachable moment passes.

A sampling trip at Acadia National Park, where Ranger Michael Marion is leading a group of middle school students in sampling for dragonfly larvae.

DISCUSSION

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he Dragonfly Mercury Project is unlike any other NPS-wide study in that it combines easy-to-achieve fieldwork with sophisticated laboratory and computational analyses to shed light on the risk of mercury contamination across varied ecosystems of our national parks. The project builds on the framework described in Zoellick, Nelson, and Schauffler (2012), where teachers’ objectives and outcomes are expected to be separate from scientists’ objectives and outcomes, even in a cocreated project. Mercury data collection is the scientific goal, but for park staff liaisons, the goal is often somewhat different. For park liaisons, the main project goal is most often biodiversity discovery or a vehicle for discussion of pollution issues. The DMP’s continued success has come not only from the allure of dragonflies, but also from the recognition of these different goals and outcomes and careful consideration about which aspects of planning, implementation, and interpretation are best suited for citizen science. The DMP has evolved from its cocreated roots in Maine schools, through a collaborative phase of development in partnership with early-adopter parks, to its current formulation as

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a largely contributory effort (e.g., Bonney et al. 2009).

Ultimately, such collaborative research can help the NPS better manage risk and protect resources from the effects of mercury and educate park visitors about the issue and potential health impacts.

The DMP creates next generation environmental stewards and enlightens a mainly youth-based pool of citizen scientists about the connection of all living things, the influence humans have upon natural systems, and how environmentally responsible decisions can protect our parks and the planet. In high school and university settings, DMP data often allow students to hone their data literacy skills (e.g., Webber et al. 2014). Citizen scientists gain new perspectives and practice civic skills while project scientists gain additional data and insights on mercury in the food web. Participation enables the NPS to foster teachable moments on the management of air, water, and biological resources and connects people to parks using parks as outdoor classrooms and living laboratories.

Results of this work suggest there is a need to better facilitate citizen science engagement with the Dragonfly Mercury Project. In future years, we hope increase the capacity to address these challenges and opportunities. Diversified partnerships and a broadened impact with agencies such as state parks and The Nature Conservancy may foster a deepened 53

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REFERENCES Bonney, Rick, Heidi Ballard, Rebecca Jordan, Ellen McCallie, Tina Phillips, Jennifer Shirk, and Candie C. Wilderman. 2009. Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education. A CAISE Inquiry Group Report. Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE), Washington, DC. Eagles-Smith, Collin A., Sarah J. Nelson, James J. Willacker Jr., Colleen M. Flanagan Pritz, and David P. Krabbenhoft.

2016. Dragonfly Mercury Project—A Citizen Science Driven Approach to Linking Surface-water Chemistry and Landscape Characteristics to Biosentinels on a National Scale. US Geological Survey Fact Sheet 20163005. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/fs20163005 Flanagan Pritz, Colleen, Sarah Nelson, and Collin EaglesSmith. 2014. “The Call to Collect Dragonflies: Citizen Scientists Study Mercury Contamination in National Parks.” Park Science 31(1): 74–77. http://www.nature .nps.gov/ParkScience/archive/PDF/Article_PDFs /ParkScience31(1)SpecialIssue2014_74-77 _Flanagan-Pritz_3794.pdf Lindsey, Ed. 2017. “A View from the Edge: A Teacher’s Perspective on Citizen Science.” Maine Policy Review 26(2): 55–56.

Colleen Flanagan Pritz is an ecologist in the Air Resources Division of the National Park Service in Denver, Colorado. At the interface of science and policy, she summarizes and communicates the environmental effects of air pollution in the national parks with an emphasis on toxic airborne contaminants and specifically, mercury. She works with a range of audience including the scientific community, park management, policy makers, students, and the public.

Sarah Nelson is the director of the Ecology and Environmental Sciences Program and an associate research professor in watershed biogeochemistry in the School of Forest Resources at the University of Maine. She is also a member of the RiSE (Research in STEM Education) faculty.

Her research includes atmospheric deposition, surface water acidification and recovery, climate effects on water resources, and mercury fate and transport, with emphasis on remote and protected ecosystems.

Photo: UMaine

engagement with citizen scientists and ultimately advance an appreciation of national parks and other landscapes and the diversity of resources they contain for thousands of youth across America. -

Nelson, S.J., C. Flanagan Pritz, A. Klemmer, J. Willacker, H. Webber, M. Marion, and C. Eagles-Smith. 2017.

“Charismatic Mini-Fauna Connect Citizen Scientists to Air and Water Pollution Issues in National Parks: The Dragonfly Mercury Project.” Poster presented at the International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant, Providence, RI. July 17–21.

Nelson, Sarah J., Hannah M. Webber, and Colleen M. Flanagan Pritz. 2015. Citizen Scientists Study Mercury in Dragonfly Larvae: Dragonfly Larvae Provide Baseline Data to Evaluate Mercury in Parks Nationwide. Natural Resource Report NPS/NRSS/ARD/NRR—2015/938.

National Park Service, Fort Collins, CO. Webber, Hannah, Sarah J. Nelson, Ryan Weatherbee, Bill Zoellick, and Molly Schauffler. 2014. The Graph Choice Chart: A Tool to Help Students Turn Data into Evidence.”

The Science Teacher 81(8).

Zoellick, Bill, Sarah Nelson, and Molly Schauffler. 2012.

“Participatory Science and Participatory Education: Bringing Both Views into Focus.” Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment 10(6): 310–313. doi:10.1890/110277

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CITIZEN SCIENCE IN HIGH SCHOOL

A View from the Edge: A Teacher’s Perspective on Citizen Science

by Ed Lindsey

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n 2008, I started working with Acadia Learning for Participatory Science. Bill Zoellick, Sarah Nelson, Hannah Webber, and other scientists had started a project to get high school students outside, measuring environmental mercury. Measurement of mercury concentrations in things like fish, insects, and leaves had become affordable with the acquisition of a new mercury-analyzing instrument at the University of Maine. Mercury sampling had always been the province of professional science because the analysis cost was so high. Now, students could pose subtle, local questions about how mercury accumulates in organisms and get some numbers back from the lab. The professional scientists were on board to provide the expertise needed to make the citizen science as tight as it could be, but they were also there to experiment with citizen science. What would happen if you gave teenage citizens some background knowledge, the means to produce real data from a system of inherent interest to them, and the opportunity to use the data to poke at various hypotheses? The professional scientists were exploring the intersection of citizen science and pedagogy, and I was lucky enough to be there.

ENGAGEMENT

or me, the timing was perfect. I had been assigned a course with the word chemistry in the title. My students were seniors and juniors who needed one more science credit to graduate. Many of them entered the course in a position of desperation. They had a low estimation of their agency and were wearied by a lack of real-life purpose in schoolwork. To survive, we needed to do something authentic and useful. I am using authentic in the sense of the Greek root meaning perpetrator, author. Useful, here, means it helps someone else do a job. To establish their agency, the students needed to make something for somebody else.

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itizenship requires a place. Some places are socially agreed-upon definitions, such as Maine and America. Other places are real, for example, a watershed. Most of these students lived within the Sunkhaze Stream watershed, which feeds its water into the Penobscot River in Milford, Maine. As a group, they knew the roads, streams, bogs, gravel pits, ATV trails of this watershed. They knew about the pretty waterfall that makes a nice background for a graduation photo.

They knew where to fish. Their intimacy with the place spanned the conscious and the unconscious.

We taped together enough topographic maps to show the whole watershed and planned to capture aquatic insects from four different streams. The mercury questions would evolve over time as we became more familiar with the characteristics of the streams and as we came to know the organisms that resided there.

Their citizenship of place created opportunities for getting work done. If I bought a student some gas for his truck, he would bring some other students to meet me somewhere in the watershed. And their citizenship of place diminished scientific fear. Students ignored bad weather and undertook daunting challenges to get data on the physical characteristics of the streams and to capture the aquatic insects we needed.

Photo: Ed Lindsey

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In the spring, these students took a bus to Hancock County Technical Center, part of the Ellsworth, Maine, school system. Students from different schools across the state gathered there to present their mercury findings. Students stood up and shared their simple hypotheses about how mercury accumulates in organisms, showed the graphs they had made, and made various claims about how the data informed, or failed to inform, their ideas. These were young people not typically trotted out on the academic stage, yet they presented their findings, or lack of findings, without fear.

In the data, University of Maine scientist Sarah Nelson noticed a pattern. Certain aquatic insects from different places seemed to have accumulated different burdens of mercury in their tissues. Insects in streams occupy all trophic levels, from algae scrapers to top predators, and you can catch them easily. Could high-trophiclevel insects such as dragonfly nymphs be used to directly assess mercury bioaccumulation in different places?

Nelson and her colleagues have worked this concept into a multiagency project involving more than 77 national park units and over 3,500 citizen scientists, using protocols and educational materials born out of this early partnership with teachers and students at Old Town High School and across the Northeast (see Flanagan-Pritz and Nelson this issue).

ROLE IN THE ENTERPRISE OF SCIENCE

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o, this is the thing. The students’ work on how mercury moves through local food webs was not being plugged into a pre-existing template to address pre-formed questions. Their work was happening on the edge of what was known, which is where one needs to stand to get a view of what might be known. The students were also occupying the edges of how learning science and teaching science can happen in a school.

The organizers of the Acadia Learning project were also working two edges: the edges of scientific investigation and the edges of science pedagogy.

So, the citizen can perform different functions within the complex system of scientific research. One function is to multiply effort—to get data collectors on the ground to feed more data into established-question frameworks. Another function of the citizen is to assume some of the risk in the messy phase of question formation and methods development.

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In June of this year, I had a conversation with Sean Birkel, Maine’s state climatologist and creator of the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. Birkel conceded that he is susceptible to distraction—the distraction of ideas, new questions, and possibilities for scientific exploration. He used the metaphor tangent.

Others may observe Birkel being “off on tangents,” but as he pointed out, the tangents are where some of the best science originates. He was implying that intentional occupation of these edgy, tangential spaces in the enterprise of science is necessary.

Both of these functions (data multiplier and edge scout) can intersect with public schooling. It is easier to organize students to collect data according to established protocols that feed existing databases. This work has its edge, though. Student citizens who work at multiplying data become more aware of the particular species, ecosystem processes, and threats to the natural world that well-established citizen science programs often address. Their work strengthens the established science, and their new awareness may cultivate activism. An increasingly perceptive citizenry makes citizen science politically edgy. This is good.

It is more difficult to activate students’ existing citizenship of place in an effort to scout new scientific territory. Their citizenship of place, though, is the root of their empowerment to do so. And when students understand that their role is to assume the risks of exploration in a larger, worthy effort, they can let go of their fear. In this model, professional researchers get company in sharing the risks out in the tangential territory.

Teachers and students get the cover needed to work the scholastic edges within the conservative institution of school, and place-conscious young citizens experience the power of civic agency. This is even better. REFERENCES Flanagan Pritz, Colleen, and Sarah J. Nelson. 2017.

“Collecting Data on Charismatic Mini-Fauna: Public Participation and the Dragonfly Mercury Project.” Maine Policy Review 26(2): 50–54.

Ed Lindsey teaches earth systems science and organizes the collaborative research program at Old Town High School. For his work with Acadia Learning for Participatory Science, Lindsey earned the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators in 2011–12 for Region 1 of the United States.

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Interview with Old Town High School Student Emma Hargreaves

by Ed Lindsey

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rom 2013 to 2016, Old Town High School students augmented the work of University of Maine School of Marine Sciences researchers Paul Rawson and Sara Lindsay to learn more about a marine worm that is a pest of oysters. This species, Polydora websteri, burrows into the shell of oysters to nest, leaving muddy blisters that reduce the marketability of oysters. To design research projects that could potentially assist Maine oyster growers, the students took their cues from Jesse Leach and Eric Moran, owners of the Bagaduce River Oyster Company in Brooksville, Maine. To share their findings, students wrote papers and presented their work to audiences of researchers, oyster farmers, and the interested public.

Emma Hargreaves tested a hypothesis that a subpopulation of Polydora websteri could be reproductively isolated from the main population within the same estuary by reproducing in the winter rather than the summer. The following interview was recorded on October 18, 2007, at Old Town High School.

EL: Can you tell us a little bit about the citizen science project you were involved in?

EH: We worked with a parasitic worm, in oysters from the Bagaduce River. We found the project through Jesse Leach, who was looking for help from scientists at the University of Maine with his oysters, which had grosslooking black blisters because of this parasitic worm. It was getting worse and he needed scientists to help learn more about the worms and to find solutions to the problems they were causing. The UMaine scientists and Jesse Leach let us high school students help with the research.

EL: What kinds of things did you learn from doing a citizen science project?

EH: We started the year fairly broadly, just figuring out the basics about the worm: getting acquainted with how to remove them from the oysters, what they look like in their burrows and out of their burrows. I learned a lot about the process of reading about a subject then moving MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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on to actually looking at the subject in front of you. It makes dry textbooks a whole lot more fun to watch the worms move and to work with them in real life.

The second half of the year, we went more in depth with a particular research question we were most interested in. Here, I learned a lot about taking an idea from start to finish. I also learned how hard it can be to communicate what you’ve learned. Because what I was working on was so specific, it was hard for me to talk about it with other people and explain it to them. I have developed a real appreciation for scientists who can do these really in-depth, long-term projects and then communicate their findings with people who’ve never even thought about that subject.

I was surprised by the fact that I actually found out something new or had new ideas, and that made science more fun and more interesting.

EL: What surprises, if any, did you encounter in doing citizen science?

EH: I don’t think I expected to be helpful. I was a freshman when I did this project and bottle science was what I had experienced so far—experiments that had been done in classrooms a million times before that just show us how something worked. Whereas in this project, I was figuring out how something worked myself, and my teacher was good at giving us the freedom to find it out ourselves rather than showing us.

So I was surprised by the fact that I actually found out something new or had new ideas, and that made science more fun and more interesting.

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EL: Did the experience change how you think about science and scientists?

EH: Yes! I think that scientists have more fun than I previously thought. It was especially fun when we went out to the Bagaduce River and helped Jesse Leach with his oyster cages. It’s really great to throw yourself whole-heartedly into hands-on experiences. Science is something that you can have real passion for, and it’s also something that really helps the world. So, it’s kind of the best of both worlds, and I hadn’t experienced that before.

Emma Hargreaves is a junior at Old Town High School.

In her freshman year, she tested a reproductive isolation hypothesis within a species of marine worm and presented her findings to researchers and graduate students at the University of Maine, as well as at the 2017 Maine State Science Fair, where she won the “Reach Award” for stand-out enthusiasm. She is a gymnastics coach in her spare time, as well as a soccer and track athlete. She plans to go on to college but is undecided on a major.

EL: When you think of science as a human enterprise, did the project change how you think about the way science works?

EH: One hundred percent! It was so interactive: you ask the question, you find the answer. It was much more immediate and creative than I thought. I hadn’t thought of science as a creative field before this project. But it really is creative to find solutions and to find different ways to pursue your interests. So yes, science is less dry than I expected it to be.

EL: Does extending the range of people who participate in science from professional scientists to include citizen scientists have any political or cultural impact?

EH: Definitely. Again, I think it’s that difference between a scientist who has been working on something for years and a citizen who has never spent any time with it. If we can narrow the gap between professional scientists and citizens and citizens can better understand what scientists are talking about, I think there will be a lot less suspicion when it comes to scientific studies or any new information that we find out about our world. When we don’t understand the information that someone is telling us, we can’t make good decisions about it. So if we understand more of what scientists are saying, I think we’ll be less afraid of it and be better able to think for ourselves. Interpreting science will become easier if we are all a little bit more like scientists. -

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SCIENCE STANDARDS VS AUTHENTIC SCIENCE

Will the Adoption of Science Standards Push Maine Schools Away from Authentic Science?

by Bill Zoellick and Jennifer Page

NGSS locally. In the course of that work, we have found that the NGSS Maine is considering revision of rules that provide guidance to school districts about the make it difficult to provide authentic science knowledge students are expected to have as they graduate from high school. science learning. We do not believe that anyone wants that outcome, Some science educators suggest adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards but we also recognize that not many (NGSS) as a substantial component of the rules. In this paper, we argue that the NGSS people have worked closely enough are overly prescriptive and narrow and that a NGSS-based standard would push science with the NGSS as binding standards instruction toward school science where outcomes are known in advance and away from to understand how their adoption as authentic science where students explore questions that are useful to the community the official regulatory guidance for because answers are not yet known. Our experience has been that authentic science science teaching in Maine will make learning is more likely to re-engage students who have decided that science learning it more difficult to support multiple, is for others, not for them. We seek to stimulate a deep, careful consideration of the truly alternative pathways toward consequences of moving toward standards based on the NGSS. proficiency-based graduation.

We begin this paper by explaining what we mean by STANDARDS AND AUTHENTIC SCIENCE authentic science learning and what makes it different from conventional school science. We then provide aine is considering replacing its decade-old Maine examples of how the NGSS performance expectations Learning Results for Science and Technology conflict with authentic science learning. We conclude by with rules based upon the Next Generation Science arguing that NGSS, when adopted as standards rather Standards (NGSS). Viewed at a high level, the NGSS than as a set of useful big ideas, is biased toward meeting are built around the important idea that science instructhe needs of a minority of Maine’s students and has the tion should not just be about specific chunks of current potential to exacerbate the tendency for many students scientific knowledge, but should instead introduce to see science as something that is for other students, but students to knowledge through the practice of science not for them. We offer these views and arguments with with attention to crosscutting concepts (e.g., cause and the hope that we can stimulate deeper consideration of effect, patterns) that are at the heart of scientific inquiry. the strengths and weaknesses of the NGSS before we At this high level, teaching aligned to NGSS is likely to make them the basis for the rules that drive science improve science learning. But the NGSS are not just a education in Maine. set of big ideas about science teaching. They are a set of standards and, as such, if they are adopted as the rules WHAT MAKES AUTHENTIC SCIENCE identifying the science knowledge that Maine students LEARNING AUTHENTIC? will be expected to demonstrate, there will be no such thing as NGSS-aligned. Either students will meet the n traditional school science, the data that students standards or they will not. collect and the work that they do have no conseOver the past year, we have gained experience in quences beyond the classroom. At the end of the working with schools that have already adopted the year, their measurements and analyses are discarded or Abstract

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perhaps saved in a portfolio. The next year, a new group of students does the same experiments over again.

In contrast, the scientific work that students do matters in authentic science learning. For example, during the 2017–2018 school year, students from Sumner Memorial High School in Sullivan, Maine, are collaborating with shellfish committees and a Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) scientist to develop a better understanding of soft-shell clam settlement and predation by green crabs in local clam flats.

The shellfish committees and the DMR would be unable to undertake investigations at this level of detail without the help of teachers and students. As another example, students at the Edna Drinkwater School in Northport and Vinalhaven School (both in Maine) are evaluating aquaculture methods for multiple marine species. These students are designing their own experiments. Their kelp lines are subsampled for a University of Maine study on value-added siting for sea vegetable farms in coastal Maine. The kelp lines and the data exist because of the students’ work.

…the scientific work that students do matters in authentic science learning.

These kinds of investigations change the relationship between the school and the community from places where students are “learning to leave” (Corbett 2007) to places where students are directly engaged in the work of the community. Maine is currently at the forefront in developing these kinds of authentic, community-centered science education programs, along with developing an understanding of what is needed to support and expand this kind of learning in schools.

HOW AUTHENTIC SCIENCE DIFFERS FROM SCHOOL SCIENCE

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chool science is usually broken into units and instruction proceeds from unit to unit. For example, students might study erosion and deposition for a number of weeks and then move on to plate tectonics.

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Investigations in school science often fit within a unit.

An investigation may take an entire class or might extend over a number of classes, but in comparison with authentic scientific work, school science investigations do not last long. This is possible in part because what the students will learn and how they will learn it are planned out. Teachers do not expect to be surprised at the outcomes of investigations in school science.

Authentic science learning is different. For example, part of the Sumner High School students’ project focuses on overwintering of green crabs. No one knows what proportion of green crabs leave the clam flats for deeper water. Developing an understanding of the seasonal movement of green crabs will require more than a few class sessions or a few weeks. It will involve deciding how and where to trap the crabs, looking at the resulting data, coming up with conjectures, and testing those conjectures. The results will lead to new questions that may require collaboration with people in other places. Developing a working understanding of how and where crabs overwinter may stretch over a few years, so this year’s students will need to document their conjectures and findings so that next year’s students can pick up the inquiry.

In working through all of this, the students will have the opportunity to learn things about science that students conducting school science only read about.

They will learn that conjectures rarely come out as planned and that this is how science makes progress.

They will come to understand that when scientists are not able to answer a question directly, it is not because they are hiding something or don’t know anything, but because good science is usually tentative and often uncertain. They will learn why this matters.

It should be clear from this example that, in some ways, authentic science goes deep into a problem while school science focuses on breadth, surveying many topics that are loosely connected, if connected at all. But authentic science is not just about depth; breadth emerges from pursuit of a question as it raises new questions and from following the data and questions wherever they may lead. Science, particularly science aimed at learning about complicated ecological systems, becomes increasingly interdisciplinary as it attempts to deepen understanding of how things work. In authentic science, breadth and depth are interconnected, rather than in opposition to each other.

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UNINTENDED BARRIERS

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e rarely meet a district or school administrator who does not get excited about the idea of seeing more authentic science education in schools. As required by Maine law, schools are now moving toward high school graduation requirements that are based on students’ ability to demonstrate proficiency, rather than a focus on passing grades. There is a sense among teachers and administrators that the shift to proficiency-based graduation will support more engagement in authentic science.

State regulations about science and technology standards shape the definitions of science proficiency that schools use to decide when students are ready for graduation. The rules at the state level can either expand or constrain the options the school districts consider. As of this writing, the regulations governing science instruction are encoded in a version of the Maine Learning Results that was last revised in 2007. In what follows, we will refer to these 2007 rules simply as the MLR. Figure 1 contains the MLR for knowledge about ecosystems, which is the domain of science in which the Sumner High School students are working as they explore questions related to clam populations. Figure 1 illustrates that the MLR are largely descriptive rather than prescriptive. They are descriptive because they

Figure 1:

Maine Learning Results for Ecosystems

Students describe and analyze the interactions, cycles, and factors that affect short-term and long-term ecosystem stability and change. a. Explain why ecosystems can be reasonably stable over hundreds or thousands of years, even though populations may fluctuate. b. Describe dynamic equilibrium in ecosystems and factors that can, in the long run, lead to change in the normal pattern of cyclic fluctuations and apply that knowledge to actual situations. c. Explain the concept of carrying capacity and list factors that determine the amount of life that any environment can support. d. Describe the critical role of photosynthesis and how energy and the chemical elements that make up molecules are transformed in ecosystems and obey basic conservation laws.

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describe what students should know. They are not prescriptive because they do not prescribe exactly how students should demonstrate this knowledge.

The Maine Department of Education is now considering replacing this version of the MLR with a revised version based on the NGSS. Figure 2 presents the NGSS performance expectations related to ecosystems.

The first thing that one might notice in comparing these two figures is that there are more performance expectations than MLR standards for ecosystems.

Looking more closely, one realizes that the NGSS performance expectations prescribe assessment of very specific combinations of performances with content, whereas the MLR describe the desired competencies more generally, with fewer references to specific science content or methods to demonstrate proficiency. The specificity is Figure 2:

NGSS Performance Expectations for Ecosystems

HS-LS2-1. Use mathematical and/or computational representations to support explanations of factors that affect carrying capacity of ecosystems at different scales.

HS-LS2-2. Use mathematical representations to support and revise explanations based on evidence about factors affecting biodiversity and populations in ecosystems of different scales.

HS-LS2-3. Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions.

HS-LS2-4. Use mathematical representations to support claims for the cycling of matter and flow of energy among organisms in an ecosystem.

HS-LS2-5. Develop a model to illustrate the role of photosynthesis and cellular respiration in the cycling of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere.

HS-LS2-6. Evaluate claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.

HS-LS2-7. Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.

HS-LS2-8. Evaluate evidence for the role of group behavior on individual and species’ chances to survive and reproduce.

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what makes the NGSS performance expectations attractive to science teachers charged with creating common assessments of proficiency. The NGSS performance expectations say exactly what the student needs to do, while the MLR leave things more open ended.

But the specificity of the NGSS performance expectations creates difficulty for schools interested in engaging students in authentic science and with local problems. Returning to the Sumner High School example, it is not difficult to shape the students’ study of clam population dynamics to ensure that they will be able to demonstrate the four competencies enumerated in the MLR. By contrast, the NGSS performance expectations focus on specific, predetermined content rather than on larger understandings that will emerge in the course of the students’ authentic work. In following the data and the models that they build, students may not necessarily need to “construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for the cycling of matter and flow of energy in aerobic and anaerobic conditions.” Whenever students set aside authentic work to focus on unrelated learning goals, it is just school science—things that students have to do just to graduate.

…we have seen many examples of how practical work focused on problems with immediate, local significance opens a door to science for students who had decided that science was not for them.

Other NGSS performance expectations are also too prescriptive and specific. Here are a couple of examples from other domains.

• HS-PS2-4. Use mathematical representations of Newton’s Law of Gravitation and Coulomb’s Law to describe and predict the gravitational and electrostatic forces between objects.

• HS-ESS1-2. Construct an explanation of the Big Bang theory based on astronomical evidence

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of light spectra, motion of distant galaxies, and composition of matter in the universe.

The NGSS contains 71 of these performance expectations at the high school level, with the expectation that students will demonstrate proficiency in all of them. We are concerned that adopting such highly prescriptive standards to serve as Maine’s definition of science competency will eliminate time and space for authentic science learning in our schools. The problem is not just the number of performance expectations, but also the degree to which they prescribe the knowledge that students are expected to carry with them out of high school. The only way to guarantee that these particular bits of knowledge will be covered is to contrive a science education program aimed at doing just that. Where is the authentic inquiry in such a program?

WHY THIS MATTERS

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he NGSS website speaks of “preparation for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which are wellsprings of innovation in our economy.” It asserts that “to keep their options open and maximize their opportunities, all students should follow a rigorous program in both science and mathematics” (https://www.nextgenscience.org/need-standards).

There are students who are willing to take that advice and dive into the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) pipeline. These students take Advanced Placement courses in science and math and thrive in science as it is traditionally taught in schools.

Yet, we strongly believe that authentic, community-focused science learning is important for these students too. Such authentic science experiences will expand their understanding that science is tentative and messy and often proceeds slowly. Students should not have to wait until they are pursuing a master’s degree to engage in authentic science. But our primary concern is that most students are not like the ones queuing up for the STEM pipeline. Many of these other students will go on to college. Some will even pursue technical careers in computing, medicine, or other fields, but even as they pursue such careers, many of them will still feel that science is something other people do.

We see such alienation from science as a problem.

We also suspect that the kinds of highly prescriptive, detailed standards that the NGSS developed make this problem worse, not better. Students might justifiably

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conclude that someone who thinks that Newton’s Law of Gravitation and Coulomb’s Law are essential knowledge is seeing the world differently from how they do.

In more than a decade of work with authentic science learning, we have seen many examples of how practical work focused on problems with immediate, local significance opens a door to science for students who had decided that science was not for them. Often the opening starts with a just small sense of competence, but with care and support, that sense of competence can grow. And once re-engaged, some of these students will decide to pursue technical careers. Our experiences lead us to believe that the way to re-engage students with science is to give them interesting, important scientific work to do.

Maine’s commitment to multiple pathways toward graduation in its proficiency-based graduation law would seem to ensure that schools should be able to offer authentic science learning along with the more conventional, prescriptive approach to science embedded in the NGSS. However, increasingly prescriptive standards narrow the number of paths available toward meeting them. If Maine revises its specifications for science learning so that they are substantially like the NGSS performance expectations, there may not be room for authentic science learning as one of the multiple pathways.

Talk about standards may seem like something that should be left to experts. The same is true for science.

Consequently, there is a great temptation to think that science education standards are something for other people to examine closely, rather than something to think about oneself, but we believe that this is not the case.

Moving away from the current MLR to a new version based on the NGSS will have a chilling effect on the vibrant growth of authentic science learning in Maine.

Everyone needs to consider this question carefully. -

Bill Zoellick works with teachers, schools, and scientists to provide students with opportunities to engage in authentic scientific work in schools. His research attends to the design and the learning outcomes of such work and to the infrastructure supports that it requires. He serves as education research director for the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park.

Jennifer Page has five years of experience as a high school teacher in Bangor, Maine, where she helped start the Bangor High School STEM Academy and co-coached the speech and debate team. Her ongoing work involves providing professional development to educators that helps them integrate experiential learning into their curriculum. She is currently the director of education for the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership.

REFERENCES Corbett, Michael. 2007. Learning to Leave: The Irony of Schooling in a Coastal Community. Fernwood Publishing, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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Citizen Science for Maine’s Classrooms: The Case for Improving STEM Learning

by Christine Voyer

workers in non-STEM occupations (MDOL 2008). A more recent estimate projects that between 2017 and Education, business, and community leaders recognize the need for increased empha2027, there will be 6 percent growth sis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education to prepare in Maine’s STEM job sector and 0 students for future careers and citizenship. STEM education best practices increasingly percent growth in non-STEM jobs, call for engaging students in doing the work of science, and citizen science offers an compared to 13 percent and 9 percent, exciting opportunity for this type of teaching and learning. Maine has a unique opporturespectively, nationally. Despite this nity, because of the size of our state and the number of research and education organidemand, not enough students enter zations engaged in citizen science, to offer citizen science experiences to a statewide the workforce qualified for those cohort of students. Through this work, Maine can serve as a model to school districts, careers (Change the Equation states, and regions for impactful and authentic STEM learning that reaches all students.

2015). Preparing students for careers in Maine and beyond demands investing in improved STEM educan the face of increasingly complex environmental tion for all students across the state. This work is critical for and policy challenges, society has placed increased the future economic prosperity of Maine students and to emphasis on science education—or more broadly science, the economic success of Maine as a whole (MDOL 2008). technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)—to We exist in an increasingly complex world with support career readiness for students and to develop an more access to information and data than ever before. engaged and prepared citizenry. The National Research So students need to be prepared to use available inforCouncil 2008 report Ready, Set, Science! describes four mation to make personal, community-level, and polireasons to teach science well (Michaels, Shouse, and cy-level decisions to address these challenges. Climate Schweingruber 2008: 3): change presents a particularly clear example of a scientifically complex and politically mired issue. For example, 1. Science is an enterprise that can be harnessed to the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99 percent of improve quality of life on a global scale. the world’s oceans, a warming that has contributed to 2. Science may provide a foundation for the develthe loss of the Gulf ’s cod fishery (Pershing et al. 2015). opment of language, logic, and problem-solving The story of the decline in the cod fishery highlights the skills in the classroom. importance to Maine’s economic future of today’s 3. A democracy demands that its citizens make students learning how to collect, evaluate, synthesize, personal, community-based, and national decithink critically about, and reason with complex data. If sions that involve scientific information. citizens are skilled in such thinking, perhaps we will be 4. For some students, science will become a lifeable to avoid future losses of economically critical long vocation or avocation. species, maintain the health of the ecosystems and The Maine Department of Labor report Science, natural resources that we depend on, and respond or Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) adapt more rapidly to changes in those systems.

Employment in Maine: A Labor Market and Workforce Maine is well positioned to improve STEM educaAssessment projected greater job growth for STEM occution and to be a leader and model for other states in how pations than average job growth for all occupations across to achieve equitable and broader STEM literacy for all the state and noted that Maine workers in STEM occupastudents. The Maine Department of Education’s tions earned on average a 58 percent higher wage than Statewide Strategic Plan for Science, Technology, Abstract

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Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) reiterates the assertion that access to quality STEM learning opportunities can improve student career choices and decision making as engaged citizens (MDOE 2010).

The report outlines a vision where Maine students “have equitable access to effective STEM instruction; receive instruction in which STEM concepts are applied and integrated; and understand the relevance of STEM to their communities and to their own career aspirations” (MDOE 2010: 1).

Citizen science is a promising strategy to support this vision for learning. Because of the number of institutions engaged in citizen science efforts across the state, the scale of our student and teacher populations, and the willingness of Maine teachers to innovate and share their experiences with their peers, Maine schools can realize the potential that citizen science offers to engage all Maine students in deep STEM learning.

LEARNING SCIENCE BY DOING SCIENCE

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cience is not just a set of facts to be memorized, but it is a way of thinking about and exploring the world.

Efforts to improve science education have identified the need to engage learners in the processes and practices of science to move learners toward approaching questions and problems the way STEM professionals would. The NRC report Ready, Set, Science! represents this vision through its four strands of science learning (Michaels, Shouse, and Schweingruber 2008: 20): 1.

2.

3.

4.

Understanding scientific explanations.

Generating scientific evidence.

Reflecting on scientific knowledge.

Participating productively in science.

This thinking is reflected in the latest national standards in science, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which integrate crosscutting concepts, scientific and engineering practices, and disciplinary core ideas. The document that predated the NGSS, A Framework for K–12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, articulates a path forward for science learning experiences that interweave these three dimensions for meaningful STEM learning. The framework articulates the following vision (National Research Council 2012: 9): The learning experiences provided for students should engage them with fundamental questions

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about the world and with how scientists have investigated and found answers to those questions. Throughout grades K–12, students should have the opportunity to carry out scientific investigations and engineering design projects related to the disciplinary core ideas.

By the end of the 12th grade, students should have gained sufficient knowledge of the practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, to be critical consumers of scientific information related to their everyday lives, and to continue to learn about science throughout their lives.

Although Maine has not adopted the NGSS as state standards, much of the work happening in Maine science classrooms has been informed by the framework and the resulting standards. In our work with teachers, including informal surveys and in-person communications, most have stated that their curriculum is targeting NGSS learning standards. In addition, even the existing Maine Learning Results, developed in 2007, represent some of this same thinking through its unifying themes and skills of scientific inquiry and technological design process.

Curriculum providers, school leaders, and teachers all recognize that this type of learning requires new classroom experiences for students. Citizen science represents one promising method to foster and support these types of experiences. Citizen science is characterized by public engagement in scientific projects (McKinley et al. 2015).

The public may engage with the project in a range of ways from contributing data to inform professional scientists’ investigations to developing investigations alongside the professional scientists (Shirk et al. 2012).

The project may be designed to engage and support novice participants or to engage more experienced volunteers. The participant experience may include connections and interactions with practicing scientists.

Through these experiences, students conduct authentic investigations and use the associated science and mathematics practices. Environmental science, natural resource management, and conservation have already proven to be promising contexts for engaging the public in citizen science (McKinley et al. 2015; Shirk et al.

2012). A focus on environmental and natural resource– related questions connects participants to critical and complex issues that are locally relevant. This work has the potential to increase interest in, and understanding

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of, science (Bonney et al. 2014; Crowley et. al 2015; Hiller and Kitsantas 2014; Trautman et al. 2013; Zoellick et al. 2012) making it a promising strategy to support STEM learning.

The range of citizen science experiences has the potential to be a rich opportunity for student learning that cuts across content areas, particularly emphasizing the skills involved in working with and analyzing data.

Kastens (2014) describes a hypothesized learning progression where students move from informal, unstructured observations of the world, to working with small datasets that they collect themselves, to using large, professionally collected datasets to answer well-defined questions, to analyzing and working with large datasets in the context of ill-defined problems. Learning experiences developed around citizen science participation allow students to move across multiple stages of this progression. When students contribute to citizen science projects, they are being supported to move from informal observations of the world to collecting relevant and meaningful data. In that context, they can use their data to answer questions appropriate to their level of expertise (examples in our work include looking at impacts of invasive species on biodiversity on the school campus or monitoring how a species’ population may be

The range of citizen science experiences has the potential to be a rich opportunity for student learning that cuts across content areas.... changing over time). That experience prepares them for working with a larger dataset, one to which they have contributed. The questions students explore with the larger dataset may parallel or diverge from the questions scientists are answering with the same data, but knowing that they are contributing to and using the same data as professional scientists may be a motivating force for the students (Zoellick et al. 2012).

Creating a context for authentic science investigations does not ensure the learning outcomes described.

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inquiry through that experience. Bringing citizen science experiences into classrooms demands effective and thoughtful curriculum development; rich and prolonged teacher professional development; supportive school leadership; in-class, online, and in-field support from volunteers, program providers, and experts; and funds to support field trips and equipment costs. Teacher, curriculum, and district leaders are critical partners in this work.

ACHIEVING THE VISION FOR ALL MAINE STUDENTS Focusing on Middle School Middle school grades offer a promising space to focus our work. Tai et al. (2006) found that science learning experiences before high school may be most significant to influence students’ science career aspirations. While it is important to support more science learning in the elementary grades, a convergence of middle school learning standards in math and science encourage a rich, authentic investigation experience where students can engage in the full suite of scientific practices.

In the 2015–2016 school year, Maine had 40,509 students enrolled in grades six through eight (approximately 13,500 per grade).1 While distributed across a large geographic region, we can reach all of those students at least once in their middle school careers with a citizen science experience. Through our citizen science program Vital Signs, we reach an estimated 2,700 students each school year, and through our LabVenture! program, we reach 70 percent of the state’s fifth and sixth graders each year. Our work suggests that the scale of Maine’s student population makes it feasible to reach students across the entire state.

A focus on middle school also supports the interdisciplinary potential of citizen science investigations.

Middle school teachers are more often organized and supported to work across content areas, in contrast to the high school level where teachers are organized in content area departments. A broad middle school focus, along with a range of potential citizen science programs to engage with, allows schools and districts to home in on the grade-level where implementation makes the most sense. This work needs to start with a statewide group of scientists and citizen science project partners working alongside educators and district leaders from early-adopter districts who are willing to lead the way and model the possibilities for other districts.

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Supporting Teacher Learning Communities

Professional development for teachers is an essential step for classroom implementation, and learning experiences need to be prolonged and supported over a number of years. We have found that what may start as a few small modifications to their curriculum becomes, over time, a completely new way of doing things. We encourage teachers to start with small steps and evolve their practice each year to achieve a larger transformation of science learning in their classroom (Morrisseau and Voyer 2014).

Through our teacher professional development work, we connect participants with peers and teacher-leaders who can give them a vision of what student learning can look like through citizen science. Over the course of the last eight years, we have worked with nearly 400 educators from across Maine, with more than a third participating in multiple professional development events. To reach more teachers and support them more effectively over time, we now emphasize building professional communities, regional groups of teachers who are ready and willing to support one another and share the challenges and solutions that they encounter. These teacher communities are a promising avenue to reach all Maine’s middle school science teachers, to support them over time, to help them bring deep science learning through citizen science to their classrooms, and to do so without exhausting our program resources. Programs will have to meet teacher and district curriculum needs and be adaptable to the local context.

Creating Synergy across Maine’s Citizen Science Efforts

A number of institutions are already working to bring citizen science into Maine classrooms. Moving forward, we should aim for a broader synergy across our efforts. Currently, Maine teachers face multiple opportunities that often compete for their professional development, planning, and classroom time. Program providers should work together to ensure that our professional development and curriculum can work to increase teachers’ comfort no matter which programs they integrate into their classroom. We can actively identify those places of convergence for participants, as well as places where they might seamlessly flow from one experience to another. It takes significantly more time, and possibly other resources, to engage in a citizen

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science–based, authentic investigation, so we also need to make the case to school and district leaders that these experiences foster powerful learning. The field of citizen science is still trying to illuminate the best practices for supporting student learning. Perhaps through an annual conference or workshop for Maine practitioners and a broader effort to synthesize our efforts, we will help fill in the gaps and develop a model for statewide citizen science learning.

Despite 20 years of trying to improve STEM education to support future career success and to foster critical thinking, much work remains. Maine has all the necessary ingredients to implement citizen science as an innovative strategy to improve STEM education at a state level. Where other regions may make a commitment to reaching all students in a city or a county, we can reach students from Kittery to Madawaska, from Lubec to Jackman. Engaged and committed research and education institutions, district and teacher-leaders, and teacher learning communities all have a critical role to play in this work. Bringing our work together, building on one another’s efforts, generating implementation models, and describing best practices are the first steps to ensuring each Maine student has an opportunity to learn science through citizen science. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the people who helped develop the thinking shared here. Conversations with GMRI staff, particularly Chief Education Officer Leigh Peake and Education Program Strategist Sarah Kirn, Vital Signs staff Molly Auclair and Meggie Harvey, as well as GMRI’s Education Advisory Committee, have led to this synthesis.

The ambitious vision of Don Perkins, GMRI president and CEO, and former Chief Innovation Officer Alan Lishness have inspired us to seek to reach all Maine students. The committed and hardworking teachers of Maine inspire and energize us each day.

ENDNOTE 1. Student population data is from http://dw.education .maine.gov/DirectoryManager/Web/maine_report /SnapshotGeneral.aspx

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REFERENCES Bonney, Rick, Tina B. Phillips, Jody Enck, Jennifer Shirk, and Nancy Trautmann. 2014. Citizen Science and Youth Education. Commissioned by the Committee on Successful Out-of-STEM Learning, National Research Council. http://www.informalscience.org/citizen -science-and-youth-education Change the Equation. 2015. Vital Signs, Maine. Change the Equation, Washington, DC. http://vitalsigns .changetheequation.org/state/maine/overview Crowley, Kevin, Brigid Barron, Karen Knutson, and Caitlin K. Martin. 2015. “Interest and the Development of Pathways to Science.” Chapter 17 in Interest in Mathematics and Science Learning, edited by K. A. Renninger, M. Nieswandt, and S. Hidi. American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC. Hiller, Suzanne E., and Anastasia Kitsantas. 2014. “The Effect of a Horseshoe Crab Citizen Science Program on Middle School Student Science Performance and STEM Career Motivation.” School Science and Mathematics 114(6): 302–311.

National Research Council. 2012. A Framework for K–12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K–12 Science Education Standards. Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC. Pershing, Andrew J., Michael A. Alexander, Christina M. Hernandez, Lisa A. Kerr, Arnault Le Bris, Katherine E. Mills, Janet A. Nye, et al. 2015. “Slow Adaptation in the Face of Rapid Warming Leads to Collapse of the Gulf of Maine Cod Fishery.” Science 350:809–812.

Shirk, Jennifer L., Heidi L. Ballard, Candie C. Wilderman, Tina Phillips, Andrea Wiggins, Rebecca Jordan, Ellen McCallie, et al. 2012. “Public Participation in Scientific Research: A Framework for Deliberate Design.”

Ecology and Society 17(2): 29. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751 /ES-04705-170229 Tai, Robert H., Christine Qui Liu, Adam V. Maltese, and Xitao Fan. 2006. “Planning Early for Careers in Science.”

Science 312:1143–1144.

Kastens, Kim. 2014. Pervasive and Persistent Understandings about Data. EDC, Oceans of Data Institute.

Trautmann, Nancy M., Jennifer Fee, Terry M. Tomasek, and NancyLee R. Bergey (eds.). 2013. Citizen Science: 15 Lessons that Bring Biology to Life, 6–12. National Science Teachers Association Press, Arlington, VA.

MDOE (Maine Department of Education). 2010. Statewide Strategic Plan for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). MDOE, Augusta. http:// www.maine.gov/doe/stem/documents/STEM_Plan _1210-FINAL.pdf

Zoellick, Bill, Sarah J. Nelson, and Molly Schauffler.

2012. “Participatory Science and Education: Bringing Both Views into Focus.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10(6): 310–313.

MDOL (Maine Department of Labor). 2008. “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Employment in Maine: A Labor Market and Workforce Assessment.” MDOL, Center for Workforce Research and Information, Augusta. http://www.maine.gov/labor /cwri/publications/pdf/STEMreport.pdf McKinley, Duncan C., Abraham J. Miller-Rushing, Heidi L. Ballard, Rick Bonney, Hutch Brown, Daniel M. Evans, Rebecca A. French, et al. 2015. Investing in Citizen Science Can Improve Natural Resource Management and Environmental Protection. Issues in Ecology Report No, 19. The Ecological Society of America, Washington, DC. Michaels, Sarah, Andrew W. Shouse, and Heidi A. Schweingruber. 2008. Ready, Set, Science! Putting Research to Work in K–8 Science Classrooms. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.

Christine Voyer is the program manager of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Vital Signs citizen science program.

She has a background in ecology research including studying wetlands, forests, amphibians, and reptiles. Voyer has been a middle school and high school teacher and is driven by a commitment to providing authentic learning experiences that empower Maine kids to make a difference in their communities and the world.

Morrisseau, Sarah, and Christine Voyer. 2014. “Tackling Invasive Species Using Citizen Science.” In Teaching about Invasive Species, edited by Tim Grant. Green Teacher, Toronto.

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CITIZEN SCIENCE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL

C O M M E N T A R Y

Citizen Science in a Maine Middle School Classroom

by Rhonda Tate

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n 2011, after a two-day professional development experience focused on citizen science, I went back to school with a new mission for my middle school science program. We would do science, rather than learn science. When I presented this idea to my students, they were hooked. Six years later, we are still structuring our year around citizen science initiatives.

What began with a hunt for eastern hemlocks and basic tree identification skills evolved into the hunt for the invasive forest pest hemlock woolly adelgid.

Along the way, we have enlisted the help of Maine foresters. We have included our school’s kindergartners, who observe the forest side-by-side with a middle school buddy. We have waded through our stream to look for rock snot and attracted the attention of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection scientists who track that species in Maine. We have identified the invasive plant knotweed in our woods and researched ways to combat it (baking and eating knotweed muffins is our favorite mitigation technique). We have created a partnership with University of Maine researchers and graduate students to measure our stream health through the presence of caddisfly larvae, and we are helping them design opportunities for other citizen scientists to do the same.

These interactions have empowered my students to take on the role of scientist and the projects have become the backbone of my entire curriculum. Now, when we learn about the roles of decomposers in the ecosystem, it is not a worksheet or a kit lab, but a quick trip to the stream to check on our leaf bags to

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measure decomposition and identify the insects present. Now, when we learn about pH, it isn’t dipping strips of paper into lemon juice and milk, but checking our stream pH and how it varies with weather and stream depth. My students have begun to ask questions such as, “Do pine needles make this stream more acidic?” or “Do you think the salt they put on our road is why our stream’s salinity is this high?”

Along the way, I have found various ways to assess the impacts of these experiences on my students’ learning. I have worked with researchers from the University of Maine on assessments and invited professors of education and ecology into my classroom for feedback.

I have tracked our state and national test scores. By all these accounts, this work is a success. The best measure of the efficacy, however, has been realized only recently. As my first citizen scientists have matriculated to college over the past two years, I have heard from many.

A pattern of responses began to emerge— many were choosing majors in STEM fields: nursing, radiology, engineering, medicine, ecology, and education. As graduation day looms for those in my first class, I cannot wait to compile the dataset that shows students who become citizen scientists at a young age not only continue to be interested in these fields but also choose STEM fields for their careers.

Through this experience, I have connected with a network of teacher-peers with whom I have been able to share my experiences supporting students as citizen scientists while I tap into the knowledge of the other teachers. We have

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shared resources, visited classrooms, and supported the development of best practices. My own teaching has been elevated through this collaboration, which can serve as a model for all rural schools. Rhonda Tate, a middle school teacher in Dedham, Maine, has been teaching for 13 years. With a background in ecology and environmental science, she brings realworld science to her students. Tate and her students have been citizen scientists for nine years and have formed successful collaborations with many researchers from the University of Maine, Vanderbilt University, and the Jackson Lab.

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Next Generation Citizen Science Using Anecdata.org

by Jane Disney, Duncan Bailey, Anna Farrell, and Ashley Taylor

Anecdata is one of a number of online tools available to citizens interested in creating and managing Crowdsourcing scientific data, also known as citizen science, is a new and rapidly their own environmental research growing field. The MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, has developed projects or contributing to existing Anecdata.org, an innovative online platform for citizen science projects to collect, projects created by scientists or other manage, and share environmental data. Anecdata currently hosts 48 projects from citizens. Anecdata was born of a organizations around the United States and abroad, with new projects emerging crowdsourcing need at the every year. Anecdata provides features that help both project managers and Community Lab, a citizen science– participants collect actionable data and interpret what the data mean, so that effective research and –education program of environmental improvements can be achieved. These features include self-designed the MDI Biological Laboratory. The datasheets, photo uploading and archiving, and data visualization through graphing and Community Lab is a research space mapping. New features are being developed to meet emerging project needs, including where citizens can bring questions or contribute to ongoing investigavideo upload, predictive modeling, and community-building communications tools. tions about the world around them.

It is also a concept of citizen engagement in science and how it can be INTRODUCTION leveraged to effect change in communities. Most of our research and activities have a local focus on environnderstanding, predicting, and managing the effects mental health, especially as it relates to surface water and of climate change and other human impacts on drinking water quality in Hancock County, Maine, and the environment are critical challenges at local, state, surrounding areas. In addition, the Community Lab regional, national, and global scales. To meet these provides outreach and education to schools and commuchallenges, researchers as well as municipal, state, and nity groups, helping spread the word about the relationfederal governments, nongovernmental organizations ship between the environment and human health.

(NGOs), community groups, and individuals responAnecdata has become an integral tool in all the outreach sible for conserving and managing natural resources and education programs at the Community Lab. Its need access to large amounts of high-quality environunique feature set makes it ideal for use by project mental data to inform decision making. There is a long managers and citizen scientists interested in leveraging history of citizens participating in the collection of the power of place to inform decision making as environmental data that has informed researchers and described by Newman et al. (2017). policymakers at all levels (Miller-Rushing, Primack, and Bonney 2012). Through an examination of 134 THE GENESIS AND EVOLUTION case studies from three project sources, Newman et al.

OF ANECDATA.ORG (2017) demonstrated that citizen science projects leveraging the power of place lead to more decision-making ne research focus of the Community Lab has been outcomes than those that do not. In projects designed on the restoration ecology of eelgrass, a subtidal to inform decisions, citizen science can help expand the marine plant that serves as a nursery for juvenile fish data-gathering scientific workforce, while improving and invertebrates, improves water quality by absorbing public understanding of and engagement with science excess nutrients from the water column, and acts as (Bonney et al. 2016). a carbon sink in temperate areas around the world.

Abstract

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We have accomplished most of our restoration work over the last decade by recruiting, training, and working with citizen scientists of many ages and from many different backgrounds.

Despite early success with restoration, eelgrass loss continued in some areas. In 2013, there was a complete collapse of eelgrass throughout upper Frenchman Bay. Only rhizomes were left behind in the barren mud. We recognized that we needed to understand this event on a broader scale and decided to crowdsource information from citizens in all areas of Maine. We wanted to know if eelgrass was lost everywhere or just in our study area in upper Frenchman Bay. We explored a variety of citizen science websites freely available on the internet and capable of managing environmental data, but each had limitations. In particular, there were no websites at the time that could capture presence/absence data. To have a data portal with this feature, we created a website with a single project called Eelgrass in Maine (Bailey et al. 2013). To recruit citizen scientists, collect these types of data, and better understand the loss of eelgrass in Maine, the site was made publicly available on the internet in the summer of 2013.

We learned from the incoming data that eelgrass loss appeared to be restricted to upper bay areas. Both Casco Bay and Frenchman Bay suffered similar losses. This led us to develop a regional consortium of eelgrass researchers who meet every other year to discuss the status of eelgrass in the region and the actions and approaches we are taking to protect and restore eelgrass habitat.

From this experience, we recognized that it would be valuable to expand the site to include other ongoing citizen science projects at the Community Lab. These include community-based environmental stewardship projects such as swim beach monitoring, coastal watershed surveys, phytoplankton monitoring, clam flat surveys, and cruise ship monitoring. Since many of our projects were initiated based on informal observations (a probable outbreak of swimming illness on a local beach, poor clam harvests, possible discharge from a cruise ship), we decided to call the expanded citizen science website Anecdata.org.

We are currently transitioning all project datasets from our Access database to Anecdata, which will become the repository of all of our project data. This will enable new and existing stakeholders to have immediate access to historic and emerging information. Interested people will be able to download and use our data to inform policy or effect change in their communities.

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Teachers and students can use data to practice analysis skills and provide an impetus and model for development of similar projects. Data users may decide to become data contributors to our existing projects or establish new projects to achieve their own community goals.

We recognized a need for an easyto-operate site like Anecdata.org that anyone could use for any type of citizen science project.

A natural extension of our effort to crowdsource information and make it publicly available was to open up the project site to the world. We recognized a need for an easy-to-operate site like Anecdata.org that anyone could use for any type of citizen science project. We promoted the use of the site to project partners and others at local, state, and national meetings. The site has grown to include many different types of citizen science projects from different regions of the country and beyond. Anecdata’s feature set continues to fill gaps in the current ecosystem of citizen science websites.

In this article, we provide an overview of the applications of Anecdata, describe its feature sets, and share some examples of groups that are successfully using the site to accomplish environmental goals in their communities. We also describe how Anecdata.org is closing the citizen science data loop by helping users of the site to progress from data input to data visualization and data sharing. This progression is yielding tremendous gains in some communities where knowledge is leading to community action and community action is resulting in positive change and measurable improvements in local environments.

STUDENT-BASED PROJECTS ON ANECDATA.ORG

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eachers and students have joined the ranks of citizen scientists in recent years. We engage teachers and students as citizen scientists, and in that capacity, they contribute data to existing projects. Others organizations have created projects specifically for implementation in schools.

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Eelgrass and Invasive Green Crab Projects

Over the last decade, the Community Lab has led environmental education programs related to eelgrass research and restoration for students from across Maine.

In 2009, we instituted a hands-on, inquiry-based environmental program in five middle schools on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, called Seagrasses in Classes, which was funded with an EPA Environmental Education (EE) Grant (NE-961063); in 2011, we expanded the program to support teacher interns and teacher-student teams from inland schools, with a second EPA EE grant (NE-96152801). From these early efforts at teacher-student engagement, the Community Lab has established ongoing relationships that continue to bring individual students and school groups to the Community Lab to contribute to environmental projects.

Some middle school students who participated in Seagrasses in Classes became particularly engaged in classroom activities and expressed interest in contributing to our eelgrass restoration efforts, so we offered additional programs to expand their opportunities to explore the natural world. We developed a weeklong summer Young Environmental Leaders program to engage these students in ongoing environmental projects at the Community Lab. Seventy-eight students participated in the summer Young Environmental Leaders program between 2010 and 2014. Many of these middle school students returned in subsequent years as high school students to volunteer at the Community Lab, continuing to contribute to ongoing

Students in our Young Environmental Leaders program measuring eelgrass density and average plant height.

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environmental projects and joining the effort to transition projects to Anecdata.org.

Two teacher interns from Waterville High School have returned to the Community Lab annually since 2012 with student research teams to contribute to environmental research projects, including eelgrass density studies and green crab surveys, and to participate in eelgrass restoration. The Waterville High School teacher-student research teams have made significant contributions to our understanding of the population dynamics of green crabs in Frenchman Bay and their impact on eelgrass density and distribution.

They entered their eelgrass and crab survey data into the Maine Eelgrass Density Project or Green Crab Studies Project on Anecdata.org. Lessons learned from school-based projects at the Community Lab include the following: • Introducing students to environmental content and concepts in school-based projects can lead to long-term commitment to environmental stewardship for some students, if opportunities exist for student engagement.

• When comparing pre- and post-program surveys of middle school students involved in environmental stewardship projects outside of school, we found an increase in knowledge, skills, and confidence of students to engage others and take action.

• We did not find an increase in middle school student interest in pursuing environmental coursework or careers, possibly because they were unaware of future options or because middle school students are not looking that far ahead.

• The model of teacher-student research teams provides added support for engagement of high school students as citizen scientists.

• When comparing pre- and post-program surveys of high school students involved in teacherstudent research teams, we found an increase in knowledge, skills, and confidence, but also interest in pursuing environmental coursework or careers. This may in part be due to the readiness of high school students to consider future options.

Other student groups have contributed data to Community Lab projects on Anecdata.org. Students working with the Center for Community Inclusion and 72

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Disabilities Studies (CCIDS) as part of the Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET) at the University of Maine collected green crab data during the summer of 2016 and learned to use Anecdata to manage and share their data. They met with parents and staff from CCIDS on Saturday mornings to conduct census work.

Lessons learned from this student-based program include the following: • Students significantly improved their capacity to work in teams.

• When comparing pre- and post-program surveys, students gained new knowledge of the effects green crabs on coastal ecosystems.

• Anecdata made it easy for these students to connect with the project.

Community Lab staff use eelgrass density and invasive green crab census data from students and teacher-student research teams to generate technical reports that are shared at the annual meeting of the Frenchman Bay Partners, a local consortium of more than 100 individuals and groups, with a mission of maintaining a healthy bay. The student data, being publicly available on Anecdata.org, are accessible by any group interested in comparing Frenchman Bay data with data from their own local bay.

Acadia Learning Snowpack Project Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park initiated the Acadia Learning Snowpack Project in 2013. In 2015, Education and Research Project Manager Hannah Webber added the project to Anecdata.org and uploaded historic project data; after that, teachers and students from K–12 schools in Maine started entering data into the site. The research question being investigated was, “How does the nature of snowpack and timing of snowmelt differ in the different climate divisions of the state of Maine?” There are a number of reasons why it is important to track snowpack. Meltwater from snow provides communities with drinking water; low snowpack can result in aquifers that do not sufficiently replenish in the spring. Furthermore, rapidly melting snow can cause flooding. Snowpack can also influence local economies, as some Maine communities depend on winter sports such as skiing and snowmobiling to support seasonal incomes. Finally, snowpack can lead to physical and chemical changes in environments that are essential to maintenance of healthy ecosystems.

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The landing page on Anecdata.org for the Acadia Learning Snowpack Project provides links to learn more about the project and its partners. The data were collected by students across all climate zones and include the onset of snowpack, snowpack depths throughout the winter, new snow amounts, and snow melt.

In all, 17 project contributors made 1,252 reports; however, 40 teachers and 929 high school and middle school students from southern to northern Maine were involved in the program. Contributors uploaded 34 photos of snow at measurement stations.

As a school-based endeavor, the Acadia Learning Snowpack Project provided a structured and effective way for students to learn about and contribute to the important work of researchers who study snowpack in the context of climate change. These included researchers from the University of Maine and US Geological Survey (USGS). Lessons learned from the Acadia Learning Snowpack Project include the following: • Starting with a small group of teachers in the pilot year is an excellent way to understand the way school parameters and science need to dovetail. Starting with a pilot group creates a committed core of teachers.

• Respecting the confines of the school setting is critical, and revising protocols to meet scientific rigor while recognizing those confines is essential.

• Engaging students in real-world citizen science projects has the greatest impact when they can see that others are using their data.

• Providing opportunities for personal interaction and space to develop relationships between teachers and researchers is important for success of citizen science projects.

The project produced data regarding snow depth and duration from teacher-managed sites that characterized a range of land cover and land-use types, aspects, and elevations in different regions of the state. The data allowed for modeling and inferences at the scale of small watersheds. Student research projects revealed statewide differences in snowpack in project years with dramatically different snowfall totals. Within a school, students identified thaw events and linkages between snow depths and the type of forest canopy cover. Currently, the University of Maine and one partner school are following up on these results and extending scientific knowledge about the importance of winter processes. The project catalyzed interest in the issue of winter biogeochemistry 73

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and ecology, with two funded research projects resulting from these pilot studies. The project wrapped up officially in 2016; since then, teachers have continued to use the data on Anecdata.org in their classrooms, and the data are available for future reference by researchers or other interested individuals or organizations.

COMMUNITY-BASED PROJECTS ON ANECDATA.ORG

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n addition to schools, a number of community groups and NGOs have used Anecdata.org to initiate citizen science projects.

Eastern Meadowlark Survey Mass Audubon and Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife initiated the Eastern Meadowlark Survey in 2017. This project aims to collect presence/ absence data obtained during repeated visits to randomly selected sites throughout the state of Massachusetts. Participants take responsibility for surveying specific points, then visit each of these points on three dates between May 15 and June 15. Visual and Figure 1:

audio detections are used as indicators of meadowlark presence. While at the designated field site, participants also recorded information about Bobolinks and Grasshopper Sparrows. In addition to bird presence/ absence, participants also recorded information on type of detection (sight or sound), primary habitat within 150 feet of the observation site, and height of grass in the observation site.

In the first year of the project, 52 contributors made 540 reports and uploaded 52 photos of habitat and birds, making a significant contribution to Mass Audubon’s understanding of needs for conservation initiatives.

Anecdata project manager, Jon Atwood, director of bird conservation at Mass Audubon, reported back to project participants that Eastern Meadowlarks were present at 7 percent of the sites visited (Figure 1).

Meadowlarks were the most seldom-encountered bird among the three grassland specialists monitored. The basic data that citizens contributed will be used to build a more a compelling case for conservation action. Mass Audubon will study meadowlark distribution in coming years and has invited citizen scientists to re-engage.

Eastern Meadowlark Distribution in Massachusetts Based on Data Downloaded from Anecdata as a GIS Shapefile and Mapped Using ArcGIS

Eastern Meadowlark Present Undetected

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Washington and Gulf of Maine King Tides Projects

Maine Harbor Seals—Kennebunkport 1980–1988 and Young’s Bay 1988–2014

Washington Sea Grant initiated the Washington King Tides Project on Anecdata.org in 2014. Gulf of Maine Council launched an East Coast project in the same year. King tides are the highest high tides of the year. Shoreline inundation at these high tides can be a harbinger of things to come as sea level rises as a result of climate change. Participants in King Tides projects take photos to help document coastal flooding risks and help municipal officials, local planners, developers, and others visualize what may become the new tidal norm along the nation’s coastlines.

Participants in the project switch on the GPS device in their phone or camera (if available) so that the latitude and longitude are included in the image’s metadata; take numerous images, including landmarks and infrastructure, to provide clues about water height; and return to the same spot later for a low tide comparison, if possible.

Both the Washington and Gulf of Maine King Tides projects started in 2014. To date, 19 participants in the Washington King Tides Project have made 68 reports and uploaded 120 photos on Anecdata.org.

Since 2014, 16 participants in the Gulf of Maine King Tides Project, have made 118 reports and uploaded 257 photos. Our goal is for all of the King Tides projects around the world to use Anecdata.org to archive photos and associated metadata. Cross-comparisons between projects might help with setting national and international infrastructure priorities for dealing with climate change–induced sea level rise.

Gale McCullough, a resident of Hancock, Maine, has been observing seals since the 1980s and created the Maine Harbor Seals projects on Anecdata.org to make sense of, and share, her many years of observations.

Gale started observing resident seals at a low-tide ledge in Kennebunkport in southern Maine and at a hightide ledge in the Young’s Bay area of the Skillings River in Downeast Maine, with a focus on individual identification, life histories, and site loyalty. These data may help researchers and coastal managers understand changes in populations that may indicate changing environmental conditions.

To date, Gale has contributed 328 reports and uploaded 24 photos, mostly of beautiful sketches of individual seals with their unique markings and handdrawn maps of their locations. She has more data and photographs of more recent sightings, which she is in the process of uploading. Gale is continuing to add her 30 years of observations into Anecdata.org. Because the archived data are publicly available on Anecdata.org for any researcher or policymaker to access, Gale’s work may help to inform marine policy in the future.

ARCHIVAL PROJECTS ON ANECDATA.ORG

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everal projects on Anecdata.org were created to archive historical data that otherwise would never be publicly available. Historic data, collected in journals, have been used recently to understand impacts of climate change on local communities of flora and fauna.

One of the most noted uses of such historic data has been the study of Henry David Thoreau’s journal entries, which chronicled times of flowering of over 500 native plants between 1852 and 1858. Using these and other data, researchers determined that in Massachusetts, plants are flowering on average 10 days earlier today than they were in Thoreau’s time and that 27 percent of the species present then are missing today (Primack and Miller-Rushing 2012).

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FROM KNOWLEDGE TO ACTION: ANECDATA HELPS SOUTH CAROLINA REVERSE THE TIDE ON PLASTIC POLLUTION.

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he ultimate goal of many citizen science projects is to change something for the better. Many citizens contribute data to projects hoping to make a difference in the world. In medical fields, researchers refer to this translation of information into action as implementing a knowledge-to-action framework (reviewed by Field et al. 2014). This framework consists of two main components—knowledge creation and an action cycle—and has applications to citizen science efforts aimed at using crowdsourced information to effect change at all levels.

Litter-Free Digital Journal South Carolina Aquarium is concerned about plastic pollution, its effect on humans, and its impact on marine life. Plastic bag pollution, in particular, has had a dramatic impact on sea turtles that nest along the Southeast coast. The South Carolina Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Care Center has documented all types of plastic items, including single-use plastic grocery bags, in the gastrointestinal tracts of various species of sea turtle.

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Of the 17 sea turtle patients admitted to the aquarium’s Sea Turtle Care Center after ingesting plastic trash, 10 had eaten sheet plastics consistent with plastic grocery or trash bags, which sea turtles can mistake for jellyfish.

South Carolina Aquarium is empowering citizens in the Charleston area and beyond to engage in meaningful conservation actions. Their goal with the LitterFree Digital Journal is to “promote collaborative solutions by tracking and removing plastics and other types of refuse from both terrestrial and marine habitats throughout South Carolina.” They are engaging citizens in beach sweeps and community sweeps in which participants • choose any location with litter that can be safely and legally accessed; • assemble supplies including separate bags for collecting trash and recyclables and gloves and tools to safely pick up litter; • designate a person(s) to record data during the sweep; • document trash types with photos; • remove collected litter from the site and properly dispose of it ; • recycle items in accordance with local regulations.

To simplify the data-collection process and save time for the aquarium staff (who used to collect paper datasheets from event participants and enter data in spreadsheets themselves), we worked with Christi Hughes, the conservation and research specialist at the South Carolina Aquarium, to design a customized mobile phone app for the project. The app was launched in March 2017. Citizens take their mobile devices in the field and use the South Carolina Aquarium Citizen Science app to enter data directly into Anecdata.org.

This eliminates delays between events, data analysis, and community action. To date, 63 contributors have made 334 reports to the Litter-Free Digital Journal project and uploaded 359 compelling photos.

South Carolina Aquarium staff used the data analysis feature on Anecdata.org to present a persuasive case to the Folly Beach City Council that the use of single-use plastic bags, balloons, and Styrofoam plates, cups, and containers should be prohibited on the beach. In October 2016, the councilors voted unanimously to ban these plastics on the local beach. The new ordinance came on the heels of a ban on the distribution of single-use plastic bags to customers by Folly

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Beach businesses, which the South Carolina Aquarium also supported.

Buoyed by these successes, South Carolina Aquarium is leading discussions about a plastic bag ban in Beaufort County; this would be the first county-level ban on plastic bags in the state of South Carolina.

Various groups have joined forces with South Carolina Aquarium and recruited citizen scientists to participate in clean-up events and public hearings with city officials regarding plastic bag bans. These include Charleston Chapter of Surfrider and Outside Foundation of Hilton Head, South Carolina, and the Coastal Conservation League of South Carolina.

ANECDATA.ORG: HOW IT WORKS

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necdata.org offers multiple options to citizens interested in engaging with their communities to address environmental problems. They can choose to contribute to a project that already exists, using instructions and protocols provided by the project manager, or take on the role of project manager and initiate a project of their own (Figure 2).

As evident from the examples in this article, Anecdata projects can be built easily by any individual or organization interested in creating a project. After

Figure 2:

Anecdata.org Workflow

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creating an account and logging in, project managers can develop a project page with an identifying logo and photo and provide a description, protocols, and links to additional information. The manager can then easily develop data sheets, choosing from existing data metrics or defining new ones. Project participants can be invited to join the project through the website or recruited in other ways such as press releases or social media.

Participants do not have permission to edit the project page or datasheet, but can contribute information as instructed on the project page.

In many online citizen science projects, participants upload data, but cannot retrieve or visualize data. For these projects, the data are generally for use by scientists and not by citizens to effect change, leaving most citizens out of a significant portion of the citizen science data loop (Figure 3). With Anecdata, once data are contributed, anyone can download them as an excel file, thus closing the citizen science data loop by enabling interested persons to sort and analyze the data and communicate their findings. For members of the public who want a quick look at data relationships using graphs or who do not have the software or data-analysis skills to create their own graphs, we have created easy-to-use data-visualization tools. For researchers and skilled users performing offline spatial analysis, all data are available for download as ArcGIS shapefiles. Finally, for those who do not have ArcGIS software or do not have Figure 3:

The Four Stages of the Citizen Science Data Loop Closing the citizen science data loop

New questions and hypotheses

Project participation and observation sharing

Project sharing and communicating findings

Data analysis, graphing and mapping

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advanced mapmaking skills, all data are similarly available in Google Earth format, or can be viewed in a map on the Anecdata website. By making resulting datasets easily available to the public, in multiple accessible formats, we allow project participants to take the next steps in the citizen science data loop, visualizing trends and identifying anomalies and easily sharing their findings with municipal officials and other decision makers in their communities.

THE COMMUNITY LAB AS THE MODEL AND ANECDATA.ORG AS THE TOOL

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he Community Lab is a model for other communities of how to foster a working relationship between students, teachers, and community members and engage them as citizen scientists in the process of understanding and addressing environmental problems.

Through Community Lab projects and programs, people achieve a sense of ownership of, and responsibility for, local environments. Over the last two decades, the Community Lab has amassed extensive datasets, largely derived from citizen contributions. Anecdata.org is our solution for making data publicly available and for empowering citizens to take action on the data they have produced. By making Anecdata.org free and available for everyone, we hope to contribute to the landscape of opportunities available online for citizen science initiatives. By providing features that support data visualization and interpretation, we are facilitating the movement from knowledge to action.

For organizations that do not have a physical space for engaging volunteers, Anecdata.org can become a virtual Community Lab, where their projects are managed and from which data are shared. Unlike a placebased location for citizen engagement, Anecdata.org allows project managers to expand the geographic range of projects, include a diversity of people from within that geographic range as contributing members, and accomplish projects that might not otherwise be possible.

For individuals or groups who are ready to take a leadership role in their communities, Anecdata.org can become the tool that helps them achieve their environmental goals. We have learned that when people are engaged in the collection of baseline data about natural environments that are important to them and provided with the tools that enable them to close the citizen science data loop, they are empowered to take action on the information they have generated.

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Anecdata.org also provides an archival space for historic projects that can now be transferred to the public domain: Gale McCullough’s decades of seal observations are gradually becoming available to all who are interested. We anticipate that other historic data will be archived on Anecdata in the future.

Next Steps for Anecdata.org Anecdata has a growing collection of projects. We are currently working to connect with SciStarter.com so that people seeking projects in which to participate will find them on Anecdata.org. We are also creating a mobile phone app to make project access quicker and easier from the field and are adding new features such as video uploads to the Anecdata.org platform. The South Carolina Aquarium Citizen Science app already has predictive modeling technology, developed by our partners at Bigelow Laboratory. This allows project managers and contributors to visualize how their data, combined with other publicly available data, informs our understanding of emerging environmental scenarios. We plan to add predictive modeling to the feature set of Anecdata over time. Finally, we plan to build out communication tools that will enable project participants to communicate with each other both within and between projects, provide additional tools for citizen engagement for project managers and participants who are ready to translate their knowledge to action, and create a space for project managers to share case studies and results summaries from their projects.

We anticipate that Anecdata will accommodate other types of projects besides environmental projects in the future. The Anecdata platform lends itself to public health, biomedical research, economics, and other types of data-collecting endeavors, some of which are currently being explored. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We acknowledge the contributions of Jordan Bailey, Stacy Platt, Albert George, and Christi Hughes to the emergence and evolution of Anecdata. The project has been supported in part by the Alex C. Walker Foundation, Long Cove Foundation, Maine Technology Institute, and MDI Biological Laboratory.

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REFERENCES Bailey, Duncan, Jordan Bailey, George W. Kidder, and Jane E. Disney. 2014. A Citizen Science Approach to Mapping Eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) Loss in Maine. Bulletin, Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory 53.

Bonney, Rick, Tina B. Phillips, Heidi. L. Ballard, and Jody W. Enck. 2016. “Can Citizen Science Enhance Public Understanding of Science? Public Understanding of Science 25(1): 2–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662515607406 Field, Becky, Andrew Booth, Irene Ilott, and Kate Gerrish.

2014. “Using the Knowledge to Action Framework in Practice: A Citation Analysis and Systematic Review.”

Implementation Science 9:172. https://doi.org/10.1186 /s13012-014-0172-2 Miller-Rushing, Abraham, Richard Primack, and Rick Bonney. 2012. “The History of Public Participation in Ecological Research.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10:285–290.

Newman, G., M. Chandler, M. Clyde, B. McGreavy, M. Haklay, H. Ballard, S. Gray, et al. 2017. “Leveraging the Power of Place in Citizen Science for Effective Conservation Decision Making.” Biological Conservation 208:55–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.07.019 Primack, Richard B., and Abraham J. Miller-Rushing. 2012.

“Uncovering, Collecting, and Analyzing Records to Investigate the Ecological Impacts of Climate Change: A Template from Thoreau’s Concord.” BioScience 62(2): 170–181. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2012.62.2.10

Jane E. Disney is a senior staff scientist, director of the Community Laboratory, and director of education at MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. She engages citizens as scientists in a number of research and education projects that span environmental and public health boundaries. In addition, she leads eelgrass restoration research and restoration efforts in Maine.

Duncan Bailey is systems developer at the MDI Biological Laboratory. He is the creator and development lead for Anecdata.org and an advocate for open data and the democratization of science.

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Anna Farrell is the program coordinator at the Community Laboratory at MDI Biological Laboratory. She plans and coordinates eelgrass research and restoration efforts with citizen scientists as well as follow-up monitoring and reporting. She is the project lead on a well water–monitoring effort in Maine and New Hampshire schools called “All About Arsenic.”

Ashley Taylor is a bay steward and data specialist at the Community Laboratory at MDI Biological Laboratory. Her present position involves data management, analysis, and support for a suite of research and citizen science projects, including conducting outreach and providing support for Anecdata.org users.

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Design Principles of Online Learning Communities in Citizen Science

by Ruth Kermish-Allen

for preparing them for the technological innovations to come. These connections have also opened up Online communities for citizen science are expanding rapidly, giving participants the the world of online communities to opportunity to take part in a wide range of activities, from monitoring invasive species to Mainers for a variety of purposes. targeting pollution sources. These communities bring together the virtual and physical In addition, digital connectivity has worlds in new ways that are egalitarian, collaborative, applied, localized and globalized also opened up the world of citizen to solve real environmental problems. Rural communities especially can leverage these science to Mainers interested in learning and sharing spaces to take advantage of resources they would otherwise not participating in local and/or global be able to access. A small number of citizen science projects truly use an online commuscientific investigations. nity to connect, engage, and empower participants to make local change happen. This Citizen science projects have multiple case study looked at three online citizen communities that have successfulbecome a popular method for scienly fostered online collaboration and on-the-ground environmental actions. The findings tists to use global connectivity to collect data for their research as well provide insight into potential design principles for online citizen science communities as to communicate aspects of that support environmental actions in our backyards. science to the general public (Bonney et al. 2009). But the level BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN of citizen participation doesn’t need to stop there. The COMMUNITY, SCIENCE, AND ACTION involvement of local people in all aspects of scientific inquiry through citizen science can lead to faster and s we learn to use the connectivity available to today, more reliable data collection (Newman et al. 2010). the definition of community changes. Community This, in turn, can inform environmental decision is no longer limited to those organizations and individmaking at a much faster rate than more traditional uals in our neighborhoods or specific locations. Online scientific approaches (Mueller and Tippins 2012). communities are another way to engage in community Citizen science can be more than just a service that the activities, from simple friendships to civic and political public provides for scientists. It can also be a tool for engagement (Lindros and Zolkos 2006). Our society communities and individuals to ask their own scientific retains a sense of community that is tied to place, while questions as they work toward building healthier and at the same time it is expanding to include a new global more sustainable communities. community (Maibach et al. 2011). Imagine the possibilities, not only for how quickly we can share, but for how LEARNING FROM SUCCESS— quickly we can learn and create change.

A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY Maine is the perfect breeding ground for innovations using digital connectivity. Improved communicahis paper explores three online citizen science tion in the form of expanding cellular and internet communities that successfully leveraged digital service has benefited Maine’s rural communities in connectivity and the power of citizen science to foster many ways. Connecting isolated rural communities collaboration and environmental actions. In exploring not only facilitates new opportunities for work and how these online communities were designed and used improved quality of life, but residents also see by the participants, design principles for programmatic enormous opportunities for broadening the education and technological features of successful online citizen and social experiences available to their children and science communities begin to emerge.

Abstract

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The three projects included in the study are the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s Vital Signs project, the Maine Math and Science Alliance’s WeatherBlur project, and the international Public Lab project. Vital Signs links participants—ranging from students and teachers to master gardeners—from across the state via missions that provide a structure and connections with experts/scientists for identifying and documenting invasive species in the Northeast. WeatherBlur is a citizen science project that guides participants’ through the collaborative process to explore the local impacts of today’s shifting climate and weather trends from identifying a common question to interpreting the data to inform local decision making. Public Lab is an international open online community where participants can learn how to investigate a wide range of environmental concerns using inexpensive DIY techniques, such as spectroscopes, air particulate sensors, water quality tests, and many others. Each of these projects resulted in online collaboration and local environmental actions.

METHODS

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his two-part study attempts to understand what makes these kinds of online communities successful at transforming data collection into local action. In particular, the study focused on understanding the programmatic design elements and technological functions that support collaboration and environmental action in these projects.

To tease out the components most essential for collaboration in these online communities, a Q-methodology or QSort (Stephenson 1935) was used to assess participants’ priorities about an issue. To understand each participant’s experience of the functions of the site and how it enabled or limited collaboration across the online community, a semistructured interview protocol and online observation tool was used. Initial findings were then shared with the focus group for refinement and reliability.

The entirety of the study is grounded in sociocultural learning theory, specifically drawing upon the instructional theories covered by Communities of Practice, Place-based Education (Sobel 2005), Funds of Knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti 2005), and Knowledge Building (Scardamalia and Bereiter 2006).

These sociocultural theories informed the development of the Non-Hierarchical Online Learning Community

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(NHOLC) conceptual framework (Figure 1) that identifies some of the critical elements to creating an ideal online citizen science community committed to solving local and global environmental problems.

All of the methods in this study looked specifically at how each project applies the core concepts of the NHOLC framework: • Bringing together diverse participant groups from widely differing areas of expertise to enable multidirectional learning opportunities in which everyone who joins the community has something they can offer and teach others within the community.

• Enabling participant-driven real-world investigations that are personally relevant to participants’ lives.

• Sharing project purpose and goals.

• Enabling communication structures to build relationships and roles among a diversity of participants.

• Sharing place-based data across geographic boundaries.

The QSort asked participants to rank 49 statements based on their personal experiences of what made the online citizen science community that they participated in successful in fostering collaboration and supporting local environmental actions. The statements can be found in the appendix, which can be found on MPR’s Digital Commons site for this article.

The findings reported here emerge from 15 QSorts and 20 interviews with individuals across the three projects. Participants in this study represented the different types of groups that use each project, such as scientists or experts, project coordinators, and general citizen scientists including teachers and community advocates.

FINDINGS

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ooking across the data, four themes emerge that seem to foster collaboration online to address local environmental issues. The key design principles (Figure 2) include (1) diverse groups with a wide range of expertise; (2) participant-driven real-world investigations that are relevant to participants’ lives; (3) access to tools and stories about past successes and failures; and (4) online activities combined with on-the-ground activities.

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Figure 1:

The Original NHOLC Framework

Knowledge Building (KB) Shared commitment to building new knowledge Knowledge is built through discussions among community members Awareness of the context of the community’s past knowledge

Diverse participant groups

Communities of Practice (CoP)

(FoK, PBE)

Sharing tools and associated practices that the community needs to solve and authentic, real-world problem

Communication to build relationships

Shared responsibilities for collaboration and decision making

Shared purpose and user-defined goals

Non-Hierarchical Online Learning Community (NHOLC) Conceptual

(FoK, KB, CoP)

Build on past knowledge, ideas, and artifacts Emergent subgoals

(CoP,KB,PBE)

Value each individual’s historically accumulated and culturally developed body of knowledge and skills

Real-world relevance (PBE, FoK, CoP)

Knowledge is based on what is needed for survival, success, and well-being in a given environment

Sharing place-based data (PBE, FoK)

Use the local environment as a context for learning Focus on topics that are relevant to learners Interdisciplinary learning rooted in the local community

Work individually and in groups Incorporate project-based work

Diverse Participant Groups Participants across all of the projects agreed on a few statements. One of those statements was that “the different types of expertise present in the online learning community are a factor in making members feel like they are working toward the common goal of building knowledge together.” At the same time, community members across all projects also unanimously agreed, “the online learning community does not need to connect individuals who use similar resources for work (same language, tools, experiences, definitions).”

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Working together toward a shared goal

Opportunities to influence positive change local communities

Flexible multidimensional interactions and communications to build relationships

•

Experts teaching novices— linear learning

Place-based Education (PBE)

Framework

Funds of Knowledge (FoK)

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Participants believed that projects are successful when they can connect with members who have experiences, information, or expertise that can help them reach the goals they have in mind. A Public Lab participant summed it up nicely saying, If it wasn’t for the site, I would never have known that there was a need for the expertise I have in these different contexts. I’d be off here in the middle of North Carolina, and I wouldn’t be connected with these people in Los Angeles, Peru, or India and places where they do fracking.

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Figure 2:

Design Principles for Online Citizen Science Communities Design Principles

Real-world Topics That Are Relevant to Participant’s Lives

Diverse Participant Groups

Tools and Stories of Success and Failure

I wouldn’t have access to the questions they are all interested in, and I wouldn’t be able to contribute.

Simply bringing together people with the same experiences and expertise will not create the type of rich, productive communities present in these projects.

Access to Tools and Stories Across all projects, everyone agreed, “the online learning community needs to provide access to the tools and practices needed to solve authentic, real-world problems.” There are two key ideas built into that statement: first, access to tools and practices to do the work of the project and, second, solving authentic real-world problems. But, what do the terms tools and practices mean? In this case, they mean the methods of data collection, stories of local citizen science projects that share the lessons learned, methods of communication within the community, and information about how to do the work of the project.

Everyone who participated in this study agreed that the online learning community needed to provide the opportunity for community members to share information with one another. Many of the participants in all three projects value a format that allows them to determine quickly if material is relevant and usable. Whether that information is provided in narratives, databases, or maps, participants need to access the past knowledge of the online community to learn from it and apply it for their own purposes.

In some cases, finding the information a member needs to advance her ideas can be difficult. To address this issue, the Public Lab and WeatherBlur use a recommendation list alert function. These online match functions connect individuals who can help each other meet their goals (for example, connect an expert in freshwater algae with someone trying to understand how algal blooms in a local lake are affecting fish). The function also highlights information related to each member’s interests that are hidden in the community and difficult

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Bridge Online and Offline Activities

to find otherwise (such as examples of how others gather data on algal blooms, what they found, and what they did about it).

Interviewees from the other projects alluded to needing a function like this to foster

more collaboration.

In addition, all of the project participants agreed that an online community does not need to provide a variety of communication methods to connect members and build relationships. In fact, during the interviews, participants repeatedly mentioned that when there are too many options for communicating, it becomes overwhelming and actually hinders communications and relationship building. In the projects explored, it is clear that simpler is better. Providing a few targeted means of communication that are available to everyone is the best choice when designing for collaboration and action.

In summary, to foster the types of collaboration and environmental action observed in the three projects, the following technological tools and practices are important: • Provide access to knowledge from the community’s past experiences (for example, past studies, subprojects or investigations, data collection methods).

• Present information in a format that allows members to quickly determine if what is presented is relevant and usable for them.

• Connect members who have information or knowledge that others need.

• Alert members to activities (in person and online) related to their interests and goals.

• Offer a few accessible means of communication.

Relevant and Participant-driven Real-world Investigations

Relevance of the project to the community member emerges repeatedly in the data. As a Public Lab member stated, “People can work on things that are really important to them—it’s the people themselves who decided that it was important to them—and they are the ones working to figure it out.” The collaborations are driven by the participants’ knowledge that the project could result in improving life in someone’s backyard.

A tool developer in Public Lab shared,

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People can ask a question about their real-world environmental problem and other people, like me, suggest ways to deal with it. People post their new tool that measures some environmental variable and other people at the site can see that and say, “Oh, I could apply this to this particular environmental problem I have.”

Members of Vital Signs highlighted the importance in collecting data that they knew was relevant and needed by scientists. This was a major driver in initial and continued participation that lead to new and exciting questions. As stated by a Vital Signs member, Once you’re going out into the field to learn about invasive species then that opens up a whole doorway of learning about what are the regulations around this species, why is this a problem, why are some invasive species desirable, what makes something invasive versus just introduced. So it’s a real-world problem that you’re introducing participants to, and they can have an impact on the issue at hand.

It became clear that each participant joins an online citizen science community to accomplish a personal goal.

On the other hand, when participants are uploading data but do not get any responses from experts to confirm or deny their findings, they quickly feel not valued. Many participants become discouraged when there are no comments or discussions related to their posts.

How projects highlight the potential relevance of their work to community members vary, but they all use mapping, narrative, and discourse in various formats.

Essentially, both visual and narrative stories are shared to help community members ascertain whether the information and resources provided are relevant to their interests and local real-world problems.

Originally, the NHOLC framework assumed that the overall goals of the online learning community needed to be defined and refined by members. Instead, as seen in the findings from this study, there was

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consensus that it is not important for an online citizen science community to define and redefine its goals. To understand this better, the interview questions probed the contrast between individual goals and the project’s overall goals.

It became clear that each participant joins an online citizen science community to accomplish a personal goal. While one’s personal goal aligns with the overall purpose of the project itself, the participants have specific outcomes in mind that they want to achieve. For example, an individual may join Public Lab because he wants to find new uses for a tool that he has designed, while another member joins to find a tool that can address the local environmental questions she is concerned about. In WeatherBlur, a research scientist may join the community to gain access to a population of individuals interested in topics related to her research, while a fisherman may join to connect with other fishermen. And in Vital Signs, a student joins because her class are taking part in a mission to find local invasive species, but a scientist may join to mobilize a network of individuals from across the state to look for a newly introduced species.

The overall goal of the project might draw them into the community, but members need to be able to identify, share, and address their own subgoals or subprojects. When online communities provide examples or stories of how members use the community’s resources to meet their own goals, new members report that they find it easier to understand how the community can help them meet their own personal goals.

Online and On-the-Ground Activities One of the most intriguing findings from this research highlights the importance of balancing online activities and collaboration with on-the-ground activities and relationships. As expressed by a WeatherBlur participant and echoed by participants across each of the projects, “We crafted our investigations offline with members of the local community, but we grew the investigations together with online community members from everywhere.” Relationships and connections built in the online community cannot exist in isolation. In Public Lab, members often design and invite others online to attend in-person meetings to talk about an issue or learn a new skill. Successful projects found ways to use the online community to continue or deepen conversations that began in person or vice versa.

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CONCLUSIONS

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s the digital world begins to connect the farthest reaches of the physical world, citizen science projects designed with these research-based design principles in mind can leverage that connectivity for greater impacts on local environmental activities. Applying these design principles leverages the power of online communities to gather, analyze, and share data that will shed light on ecological issues affecting communities across the globe. In addition, these design principles can connect individuals across great distances to address those issues as they share stories of success and failure. In a rural state like Maine, the potential collective power of individuals using online citizen science communities is tremendous. Citizen scientists of all ages can learn, explore scientific investigations, gather and interpret data, and solve problems together to inform wide-ranging scientific studies as well as local environmental actions and decision making. The design principles discussed in this article summarize both the overarching design elements for developers of online citizen science projects and the needed tools and practices to realize this vision.

This study adds to a growing body of literature focused on citizen science (Cronje et al. 2011; Druschke and Seltzer 2012; Newman et al. 2010). The design principles highlighted here serve as a starting point for others interested in designing engaging citizen science projects that build upon the power of both place and online collaboration to enable action in our own backyards. -

Gonzalez, Norma, Luis C. Moll, and Cathy Amanti (eds.).

2005. Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms, 1st ed.

Routledge, Mahwah, NJ. Lindros, T., and C. Zolkos. 2006. “Technology, Community, and Education in Neoliberal Society: A Review of Michael Bugeja’s Interpersonal Divide.” Student Affairs Online 7(2).

Maibach, Edward W., Anthony Leiserowitz, Connie RoserRenouf, and C.M. Mertz. 2011. “Identifying Like-Minded Audiences for Global Warming Public Engagement Campaigns: An Audience Segmentation Analysis and Tool Development.” PLoS ONE 6(3): e17571. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017571 Mueller, Michael P., and Deborah J. Tippins. 2012. “Citizen Science, Ecojustice, and Science Education: Rethinking an Education from Nowhere.” In Second International Handbook of Science Education, edited by B.J. Fraser, K. Tobin, and C.J. McRobbie, 865–882. Springer, Dordrecht.

Newman, Greg, Alycia Crall, Melinda Laituri, Jim Graham, Tom Stohlgren, John C. Moore, Kris Kodrich, and Kristin A. Holfelder. 2010. “Teaching Citizen Science Skills Online: Implications for Invasive Species Training Programs.” Applied Environmental Education & Communication 9(4): 276–286. https://doi.org/10.1080 /1533015X.2010.530896 Scardamalia, Marlene, and Carl Bereiter. 2006. “Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy, and Technology.” In Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, edited

by K. Sawyer, 97–115. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Sobel, David. 2005. Place-based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities. Orion Society, Great Barrington, MA. Stephenson, W. 1935. “Technique of Factor Analysis.”

Nature 136: 297.

REFERENCES Bonney, Rick, Heidi Ballard, Rebecca Jordan, Ellen McCallie, Tina Phillips, Jennifer Shirk, and Candie C. Wilderman. 2009. Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education. A CAISE Inquiry Group Report. Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE), Washington, DC. Cronje, Ruth, Spencer Rohlinger, Alycia Crall, and Greg Newman. 2011. “Does Participation in Citizen Science Improve Scientific Literacy? A Study to Compare Assessment Methods.” Applied Environmental Education and Communication 10(3): 135–145.

Ruth Kermish-Allen is executive director of the Maine Math and Science Alliance. Her current research focuses on defining the essential design elements for online learning communities for use in citizen science projects, specifically those that foster online collaboration and local community actions.

Druschke, Caroline G., and Carrie E. Seltzer. 2012. “Failures of Engagement: Lessons Learned from a Citizen Science Pilot Study.” Applied Environmental Education & Communication, 11(3–4): 178–188. https://doi.org /10.1080/1533015X.2012.777224

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C O M M E N T A R Y

Citizen Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge—Values of Inclusion in the Wabanaki Youth Science Program by tish carr and Darren Ranco

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s a category of knowledge, citizen science has been growing in scale and the topics it represents for some time. That said, it has been a challenge for practitioners of citizen science to reach communities that are more diverse.

In 2012, Rajul Pandya suggested that those engaged in citizen science studies work harder at aligning research questions and community priorities through more participatory approaches in the design of citizen science. Similarly, in 2015, Monica Peters asked to what extent approaches to citizen science and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) might align in mutually beneficial ways, so that one form of knowledge might not subsume the other.1 We are also concerned that citizen science projects can often overemphasize large-scale problems and are less likely to incorporate non-Western science traditions when they emphasize quality assurance and replicability.

Traditional ecological knowledge, as does Western science, values classification, empirical observation, and facts.

Of course, unlike Western science traditions, TEK also places value on bodily, emotional, and spiritual forms of knowing and being, as well as a set of values around the well-being of knowledge and animate beings. In our experience, there are productive ways for these different scientific traditions to work together, as long as the engagement that Pandya (2012) suggests is followed in a deliberate way.

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The Wabanaki Youth Science Program (WaYS) brings together inspiring cultural knowledge keepers to share TEK and Western scientists to explore a vast array of environmental science situations. WaYS started as a slow-burning idea that began to take shape in 2013. Realizing that the environmental leadership in the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet Tribal Nations (collectively known as the Wabanaki—or people of the dawn) would be retiring in the coming years, and few Native youth attend postsecondary education to become future environmental leaders for their tribes, a grassroots initiative took root.

Community driven and community supported, WaYS started with a one-week earth camp for Native youth to engage in TEK and Western science. Subsequently, Native American students from each of the tribal nations would be linked in with natural resource staff from their tribe to work on environmental issues important not only to the student but to the tribe. These internships were developed to be a long-term commitment between the student and the tribe. The goal is for the student to learn not only the Western science component but also TEK, a key and integral part of science for Native youth.

Over the past four years, WaYS has expanded to meet the desires and needs of the students. Keeping with the grassroots, place-based learning preferences,

WaYS has incorporated seasonal mini camps into the program and TEK afterschool programs to reach middle school– aged students. This provides an opportunity for older students to mentor younger students and introduces younger students to WaYS. One of the key successes for WaYS has been the ability for Native American science students to work multiple years with their internships. These opportunities allow students to understand more of the why and how of a project, rather than smaller parts, which is often times the case with summer or short-term internships.

A number of Native American students have benefited from this longterm approach. One student, Alexis, started work at the School of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine, her first year in high school. Initially, Alexis started finding and counting bugs that were collected from stream samples, and she was supervised by faculty and graduate students. Each year she was provided more field and learning opportunities. By the end of her senior year in high school, Alexis was the person doing the training for the new students and was seen as a mentor for undergraduate students though she was still in high school. Alexis is continuing this fall at the University of Maine in the environmental field.

Shantel, who started with WaYS as a sophomore in high school, also had longterm internships that provided a greater

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C O M M E N T A R Y learning experience for her. WaYS received a two-year grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Wells Fargo. The grant gave Wabanaki youth a chance to assess their own interests and prospects for a career in conservation science and habitat management.

The desired outcome was to develop a next generation of environmental and conservation scientists among Native American youth. The grant followed the WaYS pedagogy by combining TEK and Western science, with mentoring from experts in various related fields. In summers of 2015 and 2016, students worked as field technicians at the Penobscot Experimental Forest (PEF) in Bradley, Maine, in a collaboration between the Penobscot Nation, US Forest Service, and University of Maine Wabanaki Center. Practical aspects of invasive plant control were the focus of activities. Project outcomes included skill sets for the students in plant and pollinator identification, forest measurements, implementation of an experiment to find the most effective methods of invasive plant control, and creation of an interpretive trail. Students took what they learned about protecting a vernal pool and old-field habitat and developed recommendations for restoration specific to sites in the PEF. One of their products is a technical report that can be used at the PEF to prevent impacts by invasive plants upon silvicultural research ongoing since the early 1950s. The students also gained public-speaking skills through their interest statements to the experts and their responsibilities in hosting a tour of the interpretive trail.

Shantel expressed the following from her experience on the PEF, NFWF has provided me two summers of hands-on education through the Penobscot

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Experimental Forest (PEF). We got the chance to work with professors, traditional knowledge keepers, and Western science educators. While at the same time, we learned how to work in a group, sharing knowledge amongst one another. Our focus started at just identifying plants and blossomed into much more beyond that. We had the opportunity to work with many researchers who look at stuff outside of invasive plants. But everything ties in with everything when it comes to our environment, so nothing we did over those two summers didn’t relate to our work at the PEF. Kahlan, the youngest student who worked both years with this project, had this to say, Working for the PEF has provided me with invaluable experience. While there, I learned so many new skills and had the opportunity to participate in many interesting projects thanks to the PEF and the WaYS Program. One of my favorite experiences during my two summers interning at the PEF was learning the different plants that grew in the forest, especially ones with medicinal uses!

Although forestry is not a field I see myself in in the future, my time at the PEF has made me very interested in environmental sciences. It has also encouraged me to take a plant biology class at my high school, as well as seriously pursue the idea of some sort of environmental science major once I get to college.

When WaYS started, the focus was and continues to be on connecting Native youth with TEK and Western science. WaYS strives to create an environment for learning that propels learners from all ages and disciplines to be open to shared ideas. What has resulted from this shared learning has been a more-diverse learning platform.

Not only are the students learning from the adults, the adults are learning from the students. This has been seen before from other models. The unanticipated learning platform has been with the Western science professionals learning from the cultural knowledge keepers.

Two examples showcase this. Erik Blomberg, assistant professor with the UMaine Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology, worked with WaYS students for two summers through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation/Wells Fargo grants at the Penobscot Experimental Forest.

Erik’s role was to share his current work on bats. Additionally, there would be a few study sites established that the students would be monitoring for the season. Participating with Erik was Roger Paul, cultural knowledge keeper and community elder from Passamaquoddy Tribe from Indian Township and Maliseet at Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, Canada.

Many benefits were derived from this subproject and coteaching: • Students were excited to see the connection the bats had to the forests.

• The site provided additional exciting information for the bat study, so it was extended to the second year for monitoring.

• In Erik’s words “I really enjoyed working with the students, and for me being there with

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C O M M E N T A R Y the knowledge keeper was an enriching experience. He was able to relay the Wabanaki origin story for bats, which as I recall involved an eagle and a game of lacrosse. What I appreciated most was the opportunity for students to gain both perspectives on the modern scientific practices I was showing them and to stay grounded in their heritage and gain knowledge of their culture.”

communities and cultural knowledge keepers committed to the success of Native American youth within the Wabanaki Tribal Nations. WaYS demonstrates a path to bring multiple knowledge traditions together, and we hope it will influence the practice of a more-inclusive citizen science in the twenty-first century. ENDNOTE

Another example has been a longtime connection the WaYS Program has had with Bill Livingston, associate professor at UMaine School of Forest Resources. Bill has been working with the WaYS students since the first earth camp in 2013. Bill has been involved with the mini camps as well, so some students have gained familiarity with Bill as a result. Bill has shared, The atmosphere in the WaYS camp differs from what the students experience in traditional science camps—the emphasis on the Wabanaki culture in WaYS does help Wabanaki students be more accepting of approaches used by Western science.

Wabanaki students will listen and learn from what I have to say much better if they see my willingness to accept Wabanaki knowledge as an important part of their education.

1. Monica Peters, “Citizen Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Distant Cousins or Siblings?”

Monicalogues, July 5, 2015, https:// monicalogues.com/2015/07/05 /citizen-science-and-traditional -ecological-knowledge-distant -cousins-or-siblings/ REFERENCE Pandya, Rajul. 2012. “A Framework for Engaging Diverse Communities in Citizen Science in the United States.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10(6): 314–317.

tish carr has worked the last 25 years as a licensed forester and licensed arborist for the public, private, and nonprofit sector.

Part of her work has focused on working with underrepresented groups and encouraging their participation in the environmental field. The last five years, carr has been involved with the WaYS program at the University of Maine. She is currently the WaYS program manager.

Darren Ranco has a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology, the George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research, and the Native American Programs at the University of Maine. He serves as chair of Native American Programs and coordinator of Native American Research. Ranco’s research focuses on the ways in which indigenous communities in the United States resist environmental destruction.

He is a member of the Penobscot Indian Nation and is particularly interested in how better research relationships can be made between universities, Native and non-Native researchers, and indigenous communities.

This willingness on the part of Western science practitioners such as Bill Livingston to work in multicultural scientific contexts is a critical ingredient to the success of WaYS and our students. Of course, this context would not have been created without the grassroots movement in the tribal

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R E F L E C T I O N S

Cutting-Edge Citizen Science in the Desert and at a Museum

by Linda Silka

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his special issue of Maine Policy Review has focused on citizen science initiatives in Maine, but much can also be learned from innovative projects being crafted in other states.

In this column, I examine two that are particularly intriguing and have the potential to take citizen science in new directions: the University of Arizona’s Project Harvest, led by Mónica Ramirez-Andreotta, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Genetics of Taste Lab led by Nicole Garneau. It has been my good fortune to serve on the external advisory boards for both programs, so I hope to bring back to Maine what I’m learning. These two citizen science programs are quite different from each other, yet both are important models. Both are far from being off-the-shelf citizen science programs and explore multiple boundaries. Both programs embed citizen science in the community, yet they do so in different ways. And, finally, both are working to overcome the challenges that are still to be addressed in this new and developing form of science. So, let’s take a look.

PROJECT HARVEST

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roject Harvest, funded by the National Science Foundation, takes place in a desert and tackles the question of how to build a citizen science program that has a strong science base, finds solutions to local problems, enhances community control, and improves health through making

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healthy food more affordable and available. This citizen science program is built around recognition of the importance of community gardening where fresh food is expensive and often not readily available. But although a community gardening project might sound easy, in a desert climate, it is not.

Consider the challenges. Although people may want to garden, it rains infrequently in the desert, so every bit of water that falls needs to be captured for successful gardening. But how do we know if the harvested water is safe?

Some of the towns involved in Project Harvest are located near hazardous waste sites and mine tailings, which leads to the potential for pollutants contaminating the rainwater. As the program leaders note, these are not isolated problems: one in four Americans lives within three miles of one of the more than 355,000 hazardous waste sites in the United States. In addition, more than 550,000 abandoned mine sites in the country generate 4.5 billion tons of waste, and there are many communities located near these abandoned mines.

Project Harvest builds on the experiences of low-income, minority neighborhoods, many of which are linguistically isolated. The project focuses on water harvesting and gardening where the water may be contaminated, so it needs to be tested.

Instead of hiring professionals to test each household’s water, the project trains community members, thereby involving the community in the process and creating opportunities to actually learn

the science. A central focus is on putting tools in the hands of people, so the program has created DIY kits to be used by community members to test rainwater. The results are then compared to tests done by scientists.

Project Harvest also illustrates the importance of bringing many disciplines together to solve problems. Soil scientists, chemists, microbiologists, environmental health experts, and water specialists join community members in working on the issues. The community members themselves have many kinds of expertise crucial to the success of the program: neighborhood leaders, gardeners, longtime residents, and parents who know what children will like to eat. Teachers and school personnel and policymakers are also part of the mix. The program does not give mere lip service to the need to work together.

It is also important to use a variety of ways to share information between participants. Scientists often fall back on graphs and other technical ways of communicating data. But graphs may not always be the most compelling way to share information. Project Harvest thoughtfully considers diverse communication strategies for sharing information between participants. For example, how can art be used to convey crucial information? By involving people from the community art world in the program, we undoubtedly can expect some creative ideas for data sharing to come out of Project Harvest.

And Project Harvest reminds us that language is central to the success of

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R E F L E C T I O N S a program. People who speak a language other than English are often excluded or left on the fringes of citizen science projects. Project Harvest is working to change that model by ensuring there are Spanish-speaking communicators who are well-respected community leaders and by developing all materials in both Spanish and English.

Although Maine’s climate and context are significantly different from Arizona’s, there are lessons here for us to learn. It is increasingly important in citizen science to identify the languages of community members and work to ensure that those languages and the perspectives they represent are incorporated into citizen science projects. The essence of Project Harvest is good science done well. The goal is bringing together good science, good community, good education, all to make a difference that can be sustained.

GENETICS OF TASTE LAB

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he Denver Museum of Nature & Science is highly innovative in its citizen science initiatives. At first glance, a museum might seem an unusual place to locate a citizen science project, yet people often come to the museum to learn about science. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science is home to the Genetics of Taste Lab, a state-ofthe-art lab using citizen science to study the role of genetics in taste perception.

With recent funding from a National Institute of Health Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA), they have expanded beyond the scientific research to study the model of citizen science itself and how it involves the community.

The move in this direction, however, has brought considerable challenges that they are working inventively to overcome:

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finding new ways to encourage diverse neighbors to come to a museum that has not been a regular part of their lives, involving youth who demographically have been least involved in, and attracted to, citizen science, and ensuring that the best kind of science is done.

The lab has conducted many studies on the genetics of taste over its eightyear tenure. Some of this citizen science work takes the form of crowdsourcing, where thousands of museum visitors have the opportunity to provide samples to research projects on the genetics of taste. Other projects are citizen science, with the lab involving citizens in many of the elements of research: identifying issues; designing studies; collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data; and writing up the results. Participants are not mere observers; they are encouraged to be true collaborators. Participants get excited, learn about themselves, and learn about science. They see real science taking place.

The originators of the program have been active in building a community presence. In the Denver area, 35 percent of the population speaks Spanish, and the composition of the lab’s community advisory board reflects this. The highly involved board includes leaders from multicultural organizations, advocates for educational rights for Latinos, representatives of sports organizations, science teachers, and representatives of health organizations. The board is suggesting creative strategies for engaging the many communities that have much to offer to citizen science. Program leaders and board members recognize that the museum—despite its convenient location—has yet to be fully recognized as a nexus where diverse youth and their families might spend time and contribute to advancing science.

The program leaders realized that they needed to think about inclusivity and diversity in the lab in new ways. As they looked at what was not working in terms of recruiting citizen scientists, they recognized that they were assuming that everyone comes to citizen science for the same reason and were using one-sizefits-all methods for recruiting participants. The program leaders have started thinking about the different kinds of potential collaborators: early to midcareer participants who may be looking for targeted career paths; late-career or retiree participants who are looking for interesting volunteer opportunities; and young men of color, the most underrepresented group. What works for one group does not necessarily work for the others. Supported by the SEPA funding, the Genetics of Taste Lab has begun to diversify approaches: understanding, for example, what kinds of activities get the younger generation excited and what kinds of language should be used throughout the lab, the exhibits, and the events to capture the attention of those who otherwise might conclude that citizen science does not include them.

I have been pointing to the importance of language. Consider the phrase citizen science. The Genetics of Taste Lab is moving away from the use of that term. The leaders were finding, and others have reported this as well, that the use of citizen scientist often led listeners to assume that one was not allowed to participate unless one an official citizen of the country where the project was taking place. In other words, listeners were distinguishing between citizen and noncitizens rather than between professional and nonprofessional scientists. To address this, the Genetics of Taste team has begun using the term community science, which they find fits better with

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R E F L E C T I O N S what they are trying to do. Community science not only avoids citizenship issues, but it also signals that people are working together and doing science that is intended to assist the community.

NEXT STEPS AND LEARNING MORE

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n a desert and in a museum, we find citizen science moving ahead. These two examples describe very different projects, but both are bringing science to the people. In these programs, we see inventiveness; we see the programs combining strategies in interesting ways; we see the ways that science is not owned by, or exclusive to, scientists. The science is not hidden.1 These types of programs need committed funding in order to continue.

Nicole Garneau describes the issue as one of “in betweenness”; citizen science is neither one thing nor another. There is funding dedicated to education programs and there is funding specifically for research programs, but what are citizen science programs? A funder might look at a proposed citizen science initiative and conclude that this is an education program and not a research initiative. Alternatively, a funder might look at a citizen science program and assume that it is a research study rather than an education program. Yet, what is unique about these programs is the extent they cross these boundaries and can effectively integrate research and education. If citizen science and programs such as these are to continue to develop, then we must find ways around this challenge. We need to help people understand that these programs have the potential to bring together the best of research and education. -

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ENDNOTE 1. To learn more about Project Harvest, go to the website https://projectharvest .arizona.edu. To learn more about the Genetics of Taste Lab and its diversity research, visit https://www.dmns.org /genetics and https://nihsepa.org/ project/more-than-just-a-taste-of-citizen -science/. Next time you travel to Denver or Tucson, take the opportunity to visit these great citizen science initiatives!

Linda Silka is the executive editor of Maine Policy Review. A social and community psychologist by training, Silka was formerly director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. In addition to her role with MPR, she is a senior fellow at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

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Reflections on the Strong Growth of Citizen Science: An Interview with Abe Miller-Rushing Can you share your thoughts about the strong growth of citizen science?

I think the strong growth of citizen science is driven by a happy set of coincidences—developments in technology, computing, communication, and data analysis; growing interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education; growing recognition that volunteers can contribute meaningfully to science (after more than 100 years of science trending in the opposite direction, towards professionalization); and an emphasis on making science more relevant to society and translating science to action. I think it’s telling that citizen science blossomed in recent years in lots of different areas independently— big nature observation programs, online data processing and games, DIY labs in urban centers, community-based groups solving local public health or environmental problems, and traditional amateur science clubs and organizations, among others. People working in these different areas of citizen science have only recently started communicating regularly, learning from each other, and working as a cohesive community of practice. The explosion of citizen science in all these areas just goes to show that the idea of citizen science was a good idea whose time had come for lots of areas of science and society.

What is happening in Maine with regard to citizen science?

Maine is a hot spot for citizen science in the country.

When I go to national meetings on citizen science, Maine is disproportionately represented. It’s great to see. Maine has a strong history of community members taking it on themselves to tackle all kinds of issues—a type of self reliance. Maine has a long tradition of citizen science programs in recording basic natural history observations of birds, fish, plants, and other species; monitoring water quality in lakes and at beaches; and solving local problems. In recent years, Maine organizations (Maine Audubon, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, University of MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Maine, Maine Sea Grant, MDI Biological Lab, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and many others) have used their expertise in citizen science to test innovations in how to design programs to improve their value for science, conservation, communities, or education. Several of these programs have grown beyond Maine, and many are nationally known.

What leadership role has the Schoodic Institute played?

Schoodic Institute, which started in 2003, has really grabbed onto its role in testing ways to do citizen science better and to facilitate growth and communication of best practices in the field. They have developed several new approaches to getting citizen science into classrooms and getting students into the field and for making their science meaningful for scientists, teachers, and students.

Schoodic Institute has had a crucial role in helping to establish the growing Citizen Science Association. I think innovation hubs like Schoodic Institute will be important to the continued growth of the field.

How national parks have been involved?

National parks are natural places for citizen science.

Huge numbers of people visit the parks (Acadia National Park has had over 3 million visits each of the last couple of years), and most of those visitors are eager to learn and contribute and want to continue contributing when they get home. National parks have done a lot with citizen science—especially through wildlife observation and bioblitzes (an intense period of biological surveying in a particular area)—but we’ve been limited to a large degree by our bureaucracy—things like strong stovepipes limiting communication across disciplines, which limits interdisciplinary interactions crucial for citizen science, and the Paperwork Reduction Act, which limits our ability to ask volunteers to help collect data. But happily the National Park Service attracts employees 92

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and partners who are predisposed to appreciate citizen science and see its potential. We are investing a lot of energy into overcoming the obstacles and strengthening our system of citizen science in national parks and increasing its benefit to visitors and to preserving park resources. We want to make science a valuable part of every visitor’s and employee’s experience.

What are we learning from the many different citizen science projects?

We’re learning a ton! It’s like drinking from a fire hose right now. What I love most is that we’re at a stage where learning is happening across groups that you wouldn’t think would normally interact—technology hackers, environmental justice advocates, online game developers, social scientists, conservation biologists, big data scientists, astronomers, public health experts, policymakers, and K–12 educators.

What surprises you have found in the citizen science movement and work?

There have been many surprises. I think it’s in the nature of a highly interdisciplinary field, where people come from many different backgrounds, that it would be unpredictable and full of surprises. I have been surprised at how enthusiastically and naturally many different people working in citizen science have come together through the Citizen Science Association and other collaborative groups to push the field forward. I have been surprised at the continued skepticism of citizen science data from professional scientists— happily that is waning as evidence of the value of citizen science data grows and citizen science becomes a part of more and more high-profile science projects. That skepticism also helps check some of the overpromising of citizen science that has happened in the past. I have also been surprised at the pace of innovation. People are creative and have tons of great ideas. I am amazed at the variety of ways that people of all ages can engage in meaningful science!

What opportunities or setbacks have people encountered in doing citizen science?

In terms of opportunities, I think we have only scratched the surface of how we can apply citizen science at scale to address some of the wicked problems facing sociMAINE POLICY REVIEW

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ety—e.g., public health, environmental justice, climate change, conservation, food security, and disaster response. That would take a lot of coordination among different disciplines and organizations, including public and private sectors. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think it will soon. For setbacks, I would say (knock on wood) the field has managed to avoid most big ones. Some that have come up are skepticism about data quality, the sense that citizen science represents free labor (it’s not free and is often underfunded, which can lead to poor experiences for volunteers and bad science in some cases), and the sense that citizen science is simply environmental education and not really science at all.

Citizen science has various goals: to collect more data, to provide educational opportunities, to educate communities, to have data influence policy. How we are doing in terms of these various goals?

I think a huge challenge for any project is to have clear goals and desired outcomes that can be achieved with the resources available. That almost always means prioritizing and managing trade-offs among competing goals.

If a project is being done primarily to answer a scientific question, that goal should be kept in the fore; similarly, if the focus is education or policy, other project goals can take a back seat when resources are scarce (as they always are). A challenge that citizen science projects have beyond many types of projects is that they require really diverse skill sets—expertise in science, working with volunteers, education, technology, translation of science to policy—that can be tough to bring together.

In general, though, I would say the field is making good progress on all the types of goals listed in the question.

For whom is citizen science making a difference: policymakers, citizens, scientists?

All of the above! I think citizen science is helping change how society (including scientists) think about science and how it can and should be done. It’s leading to new knowledge, policies, and management. I think those are great outcomes!

Abe Miller-Rushing is the science coordinator for Acadia National Park and the Schoodic Education and Research Center. He is responsible for setting the science priorities for the park and as a result plays a key role in the Schoodic Institute’s science programs, including citizen science.

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C O M M E N T A R Y

The Power of Place in Citizen Science

by Bridie McGreavy with Greg Newman, Mark Chandler, Malin Clyde, Muki Haklay, Heidi L. Ballard, Steven Gray, Russel Scarpino, Rita Hauptfeld, and John A. Gallo

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hen people show up to search a lake for invasive plants, or venture into tangled shrub swamps to count egg masses, or withstand cold temperatures to count birds on Christmas Day, we know that something powerful motivates them. We also know that because of the geographic focus, intensity of effort, and duration of observations the information that citizen scientists collect has real relevance for making conservation decisions that affect various habitats and species. But what are the links between motivations for citizen science, connections to place, and conservation decision outcomes? A group of researchers and practitioners posed this question at the 2015 Citizen Science Association conference in San Jose, California. Our facilitated conversation at the conference grew into an interdisciplinary exploration of these relationships in a paper published in a special issue of Biological Conservation, entitled “Leveraging the Power of Place in Citizen Science for Effective Conservation Decision Making” (Newman et al. 2016).

Based on our collective experiences working in citizen science initiatives all over the world, we identified how connection to place matters for involvement in citizen science and for linking the information that citizen scientists collect with on-the-ground decision making for conservation outcomes. We looked at 134 combined case studies in three major citizen science programs, including Earthwatch, a global program where citizen science volunteers can work directly with researchers in

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fee-based service projects; CitSci.org, an international online platform that supports citizen science programs; and the Stewardship Network New England, a regional network of community-based monitoring programs. Our approach allowed us to combine our different disciplinary lenses to define place in multiple ways (Massey 2005; Stedman 2003). The natural scientists among us focused on ecological and material conceptualizations of place, while those in the social sciences identified how place is culturally shaped and created.

Together, we built a framework for understanding place as a combination of five different elements including • social-ecological—how the ecology of a physical place and the flow of matter and energy supports life and human wellbeing; • narrative and name based—how the place-name and associated stories create cultural meanings and attachments to a place; • knowledge based—which acknowledges the diversity of ways of knowing about a place; • emotional—the affective response people have to a particular locale and the memories that shape experiences in a place over time; • performative—a dynamic factor that recognizes how places continually change and how people can (re)make places through relational practices.

Building from this multidimensional understanding of place, we then used mixed methods, combining qualitative thematic interpretations with quantitative statistical analysis, to identify the extent to which programs identified the goal of connecting citizen science with conservation decision making, indicators that they accomplished this goal, and the ways in which the program sought to connect with the five place dimensions. Overall, we found most citizen science projects (89 percent) intend to inform conservation decision making, and 54 percent showed evidence of connecting knowledge with conservation actions. We also found a statistically significant relationship between place and conservation outcomes, where programs that had success in using citizen science information also engaged a greater number of place dimensions in their program. Our results indicate that the quality and extent of connections to place in citizen science programs may shape linking citizen science data with conservation decision making.

This work matters because if citizen science programs want to accomplish specific conservation-related goals, they need to design programs in ways that help them understand, over time, whether they are meeting these goals and how they can redirect efforts to achieve their intended outcomes. Further, this research helps show how place is a key factor in motivations to participate and in linking knowledge with action. We encourage citizen science programs to harness the power of place in their

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C O M M E N T A R Y programs and provide specific recommendations such as the need to explicitly incorporate the concept of place into programs in multiple ways and also increase place-based collaborations.

Attending to place can activate our curiosity and help us move out of our comfort zones and into the natural and human communities that are waiting to be understood and where, working together, we can make informed decisions about our shared futures. REFERENCES

Greg Newman, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Mark Chandler, Earthwatch Institute, Allston, MA

Malin Clyde, University of New Hampshire, Cooperative Extension, Durham, NH Muki Haklay, University College London, WC1E 6BT London, UK Heidi L. Ballard, UC Davis, School of Education, Davis, CA

Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Steven Gray, Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Newman, G., M. Chandler, M. Clyde, B. McGreavy, M. Haklay, H. Ballard, S. Gray, R. Scarpino, R. Hauptfeld, D. Mellor, and J. Gallo. 2016. “Leveraging the Power of Place in Citizen Science for Effective Conservation Decision Making. Biological Conservation 208:55–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016 /j.biocon.2016.07.019

Russell Scarpino, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO Rita Hauptfeld, Warner College of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO

Stedman, Richard C. 2003. “Is It Really Just a Social Construction?: The Contribution of the Physical Environment to Sense of Place.”

Society and Natural Resources 16:671–685.

John A. Gallo, Conservation Biology Institute, Corvallis, OR

Bridie McGreavy is an assistant professor of environmental communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine. She studies communication within sustainability science and coastal and freshwater management contexts.

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Citizen Science Book Resources

by Linda Silka

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he interest in citizen science is taking off, and the result is a variety of new books filled with useful ideas for citizen science initiatives. In this piece, I offer a few suggestions about books likely to be of particular interest to policymakers, citizen scientists, teachers, or scientists. These books are great resources for building on MPR’s exploration of Maine’s approaches to citizen science.

If you are a policymaker, you might look at The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science. Published in 2016, this short but informative book, edited by Darlene Cavalier and Eric B. Kennedy, includes chapters such as “When Citizen Science Meets Science Policy.”

Cavalier’s chapter, for example, highlights some of the barriers that have stood in the way of citizens influencing policy decisions built on science data: Scientists and other experts seemed to fear that the lay public, largely lacking formal science education, could not grasp technical concepts as they relate to policy. By and large, they concluded that unless people possessed credentialed scientific expertise, they should be excluded from any discussion of how research into such topics as, say, synthetic biology, biomedicine, alternative energy, or climate change should be funded or applied. (p. 11) Cavalier’s chapter also shares strategies for introducing citizen science at various stages in the public policy process so that these barriers are overcome.

Policymakers will also likely find Kennedy’s chapter in The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science informative, as it points to the important role that citizen science can play in a democratic society in opening up the science process: According to many, citizen science—put simply, public engagement in scientific research and decision making—represents a radically new way forward: a path that engages every kind of person in research and decision making, democratizes science for all, and offers a new distribution of

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power and influence in universities and beyond.

The term conjures visions of a more inclusive world of science a more engaged public and citizenry, and rich treasure troves of data for addressing important problems. (p. 21) If you are a citizen scientist or hope to become one, you will also likely be interested in many chapters of The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science. You will discover many chapters about who is becoming involved in citizen science and some unusual paths they have taken to get there and become leaders.

Cavalier’s chapter “An Unlikely Journey into Citizen Science” is a great place to start. Cavalier describes her life as a professional cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers and explains how she founded the Science Cheerleaders in which hundreds of current and former professional cheerleaders from sports leagues such as the NFL and NBA have become leaders in citizen science. The chapter describes the ways that cheerleaders have become involved and points out how others can also do so.

And if you are a teacher, there are chapters in The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science that will be of interest to you. Robert Dunn and Holly Menninger’s chapter “Teaching Students How to Discover the Unknown” resonates with the projects described in the articles throughout this MPR issue. As the authors note, citizen science offers important teaching opportunities.

The authors use a discussion of their project “Students Discover: Improving Middle School STEM Outcomes through Scaling Citizen Science Projects” to reflect on citizen science and education. The chapter examines where we learn from each other and where there might be opportunities to bring our knowledge together: The act of co-creation is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and messy, much like the process of science itself. Yet we think the payoffs, if we can achieve them—deep changes in teacher knowledge and instructional practice, increased student engagement in science learning, and improved science achievement—will be totally

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worth it. We will not stop working until real science—investigations where the answers are neither known nor predetermined—become the norm in the middle school classroom. (p. 69) Regardless of your role, you might be looking for guidance in how to start and carry out a citizen science project. If you are looking for a how-to manual, consider Citizen Science for All: A Guide for Citizen Science Practitioners. This short translated guide, which was first published in German, describes the steps being taken in Europe to build robust citizen science programs. The manual includes information on “What Is Citizen Science?” “Why Citizen Science?

What Are the Advantages? What Are the Challenges?”

“Initiating a Citizen Science Project: Choosing Partners, Methods, and Participants,” “Data: Important Issues for Citizen Science Data,” “Communication and Feedback,” “Evaluating Citizen Science Projects,” and “Funding.” In its “Citizen Science Landscape” section, the book includes many illustrative examples that may help people get started on their own citizen science projects. These examples include “Citizen Science in Nature Conservation,” “Citizen Science and Education,” “Digital Citizen Science,” “Citizen Science in the Social Sciences,” “Citizen Science in Health Research,” “Citizen Science in the Arts and Humanities.” The book also highlights many international examples of citizen science and is replete with stories as well follow-up resources.

If you are a scientist, you will likely find the book Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery especially instructive about areas of science that might be amenable to citizen science approaches. The book, written by Caren Cooper who now serves on the governing board of the national Citizen Science Association, covers science topics that are being investigated by citizen scientists. The diversity of these topics is eye opening: meteorology, ornithology, entomology, astronomy, biochemistry, microbiology, conservation, marine biology, geography, and public health. The organization of the book’s chapters under the overarching themes of “Hobbies of Discovery,” “The Necessity of Leisure,” and “A World Where Everybody Counts” provides a sense of the diverse roles of citizen scientists. Cooper describes, for example, how large number of people who play games online in their leisure are being tapped as important resources for producing

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the enormous amount of protein-folding data need for research in biochemistry.

If your hope is to become a citizen scientist, there is likely no better place to see the process in depth than by reading Mary Ellen Hannibal’s book Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction. With the goal of learning about citizen science, Hannibal concluded that the best way to do so was to immerse herself in the process of becoming a citizen scientist. The result is this highly informative, first-person account in which Hannibal describes how transformative this process was as she participated in and observed the important work being done by citizen scientists to address challenging and difficult environmental problems.

PAYING ATTENTION TO HISTORY

A

s you seek citizen science resources, you might assume that searching under the phrase citizen science will call up most of the resources out there. But this will lead you to miss descriptions from the past when these actions were commonplace but had yet to be labeled as citizen science. Indeed, Hannibal and Cooper both take readers through an instructive history of science, helping readers understand that citizen science is not so much a new approach as it is a way of returning to original methods of science. As Cooper notes, science is a fairly new occupation. Most early scientists were citizen scientists rather than professionally trained scientists. And Maine was a leader in this early systematic and amateur approach to science. In other words, we are not starting from scratch. Two resources are helpful in understanding this history.

The book Lewis & Clark: Pioneering Naturalists,

by Paul R. Cutright, is an example of a resource that might be missed if one only looks under the term citizen science. The book describes in detail the extensive data collected by the Corps of Discovery Expedition, which took place from 1804 through 1806: where the data were collected and how the data continue to be key resources.

There are other resources that provide a sense of important science from the past that may not be labeled citizen science, but are important to our search for methods and understanding. The book Braiding Sweetgrass, for example, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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describes indigenous approaches to science and considers how they are important for understanding nature. This book reflects citizen science, but will not be found by looking under that phrase.

CONCLUSION

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ny of these books can be a great starting point for becoming acquainted with citizen science. Cooper’s concluding chapter, “Call to Action,” is informative for anyone interested in contributing to science: If you were inspired by the stories in this book, then I hope you are wondering: ‘What’s next?’.

There are many ways to get involved in citizen science, or more deeply involved than you already are. Citizen science is rapidly growing.

That’s great news—but it can also be confusing and overwhelming. (p. 277) And, as Cooper notes, things are changing quickly: This book is static, but projects of citizen science are dynamic—it is an ever-changing landscape.

Rather than compile a list of projects and resources that would soon be out-of-date, I want to point you to a one-stop-shop, the Amazon of citizen science. It’s called SciStarter.

And this brings us back to the Darlene Cavalier, who coedited The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science. Cavalier is a leader of SciStarter.com, which houses over 1,500 citizen science projects, making it the largest repository of citizen science projects in the world.

This is a great place to find citizen science opportunities that might be of interest to you—as citizen scientist, researcher, scientist, or policymaker. -

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REFERENCES Cutright, Paul R. 2003. Lewis & Clark: Pioneering Naturalists.

University of Illinois Press, Champaign.

Cavalier, Darlene, and Eric B. Kennedy (eds.) 2016. The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science. Arizona State University Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, Tempe.

Cooper, Caren. 2016. Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery. The Overlook Press, New York.

Hannibal, Mary Ellen. 2016. Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction. The Experiment, New York.

Kimmerer, Robin W. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Milkweed Press, Minneapolis.

Pettibone, Lisa et al. 2016. Citizen Science for All: A Guide for Citizen Science Practitioners, English ed. The Citizen Science Platform, Germany.

Linda Silka is the executive editor of Maine Policy Review. A social and community psychologist by training, Silka was formerly director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. In addition to her role with MPR, she is a senior fellow at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions.

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Thanks to Our Reviewers…

We would like to extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to all those who took time to review articles submitted for consideration to Maine Policy Review. Their insights and recommendations assist us in our editorial decision-making, and provide valuable feedback to authors in revising their articles to be suitable for publication in the journal.

The following individuals reviewed articles for Volume 26 (2017):

Ann Acheson Louis Bassano Richard Brzozowski Ron Deprez Lloyd Irland James McConnon Linda Silka David Vail Jamie Wren

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