Photo by Andrew Snyder
Community science biodiversity projects
Whether you like photographing songbirds, dragonflies, or even seahorses, there’s a project for you! Visit the listed website for further details on the project and how you can get involved.
Know of other local, regional, or national community science projects or a conservation project that could use a nature photographer’s help? Contact Andrew Snyder to get additional projects listed.
| Project Name | Project Info | Geographic Region | Photographer contribution | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Horseshoe Count | "In the absence of human interference, horseshoe crabs have successfully evolved for over 475 million years. ERDG [Ecological Research & Development Group] has made a commitment to protect this remarkable mariner who plays a vital role in nature's delicately balanced food web and whose life-sustaining contributions to humanity have yet to be fully realized. We believe that the foundation of a successful conservation program is effective public education and coastal community support, in conjunction with conservation initiatives, both terrestrial and aquatic, that preserve essential habitat and minimize human impact. | DE and NJ | Photographers can help create a visual record of the spawning beaches which ultimately show changes over time. They can also assist in actual counts of individual crabs as well as visually report horseshoe crab sightings, tags, and additional spawning beach sites. | http://www.horseshoecrab.org/act/count.html |
| North America Butterfly Association | The sightings you enter provide important information that the North American Butterfly Association will analyze to help answer scientists' questions about butterfly distributions, abundance, and conservation. Your data can also provide critical insights about how environmental factors such as pollution can affect delicate natural ecosystems, and perhaps assist in the passing of new legislation and regulations that will ensure the safety and existence of butterflies for a long time to come. We hope that you enjoy the web site, and the fact that your entries are aiding in the study and conservation of butterfly populations in North America. | Nationwide with regional chapters | Photographers can keep track of all butterfly sightings. Once sightings are entered, they can be retrieved by location, date, or species. The site also offers the ability to print out a list of all the butterfly species you have ever seen - a Life List. These images help scientists better understand butterfly distribution and abundances. | http://www.naba.org/ |
| Great Backyard Bird Count | Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time. Now, more than 160,000 people of all ages and walks of life worldwide join the four-day count each February to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds. | Nationwide | Photographers contribute images of birds taken during the four-day count each February to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds. | http://gbbc.birdcount.org/ |
| Project FeederWatch | Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the birds they see at their feeders from November through early April and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images to become FeederWatch data which will help scientists track broadscale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance. | http://feederwatch.org/ |
| Journey North - Hummingbirds | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute their images to help track the migration of hummingbirds as they travel to and from their wintering grounds. Images help researchers observe seasonal changes via reported hummingbird sightings | https://journeynorth.org/hummingbirds |
| Journey North - Monarch Butterflies | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images to help scientists track the monarch's migration to and from Mexico each spring and fall to aid in their conservation needs. | https://journeynorth.org/monarchs |
| Journey North - American Robins | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of robins to help scientists track their movements from year to year. | https://journeynorth.org/robins |
| Journey North - Sunlight and Seasons | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can help track seasonal changes in daylight to help scientists identify patterns. Images reported on the 20th of every month, the Equinox, and the Solstice, tie in with images of migratory species with Journey North. | https://journeynorth.org/sunlight-seasons |
| Journey North - Songbird Migration | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of songbirds to help track their seasonal migration. | https://journeynorth.org/weather-songbirds |
| Journey North - Gray Whales | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | West Coast | Photographers can help scientists track the movement of gray whales between their feeding/fattening grounds and their birthing grounds. | https://journeynorth.org/gwhale/ |
| Journey North - Frogs | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Regional depending on frog species | Citizen scientists/photographers can report the first singing frogs of spring and help monitor frog populations and phenology by reporting the timing of this spring life cycle event. The target species include the Chorus frog ( Pseudacris triseriata ), Spring Peeper ( Pseudacris crucifer ), Spotted Chorus frog ( Pseudacris clarkii ), and the Pacific chorus frog ( Pseudacris regilla ). | https://journeynorth.org/frog/ |
| Journey North - Barn Swallow | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of barn swallows when they first arrive to the region in the spring to track their yearly migration north. | https://journeynorth.org/swallow/ |
| Journey North - Common Loon | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Coastal United States (Winter Range) Northern United States and Canada (Breeding Range) | Photographers can contribute images of the first sightings of the common loon in the spring in conjunction with reporting and tracking "ice-out" with the loon migration. | https://journeynorth.org/loon/ |
| Journey North - Red winged blackbirds | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can help track the redwing blackbird migration all over the continent as they move from where they overwinter (in fields, pastures, and agricultural areas) and transition into spring behavior and return to marshes. Photographers contribute images of the first redwing sightings as well as other redwing behavior sightings. | https://journeynorth.org/rwbb/ |
| Journey North - Earthworms | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Earthworms undertake a "vertical migration" each spring which is often connected to the first arrival of robins. Photographers can contribute images of the first earthworms of the season to help document the regional timing of their migration. | https://journeynorth.org/worm/ |
| Journey North - Orioles | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of the first Baltimore and Bullock Orioles that they encounter each spring after arriving from their southern wintering grounds. Photographers are encouraged to place an oriole feeder and document sightings in conjunction with the "leaf- out" project. Photographers are also encouraged to contribute images of the first signs of orioles building their nest. | https://journeynorth.org/oriole/ |
| Journey North Leaf-Out | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of leaves of Sugar Maples, Flowering Dogwoods, Redbuds, and Quaking Aspen when leaves are the size of a US quarter. This data ties in with other projects such as songbird and oriole migration to tie bird migration patterns with tree phenology. | https://journeynorth.org/tm/spring/AboutLeaf.html |
| Journey North - Ice - Out | Journey North provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Reported sightings are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent. People report sightings from the field, view maps, take pictures, and leave comments. | Nationwide | "Ice-out" is the term for when ice cover melts from lakes, rivers, ponds and oceans during the spring. Photographers can choose a frozen body of water and document the "ice-out" event (when the body of water is 90% free of ice) in order to compare the date of occurrence each year. | https://journeynorth.org/ice/ |
| Appalachian Mountain Club | "Mountain Watch is a citizen science program engaging hikers in hands-on monitoring of air quality and climate change. Through activities along the trail and at AMC high huts, we provide opportunities to learn about air pollution’s impacts to visibility, climate trends in the mountains, and the impacts of recent climate change on plant flowering and fruiting times and other seasonal biological events." | Appalachian and Northeast mountain areas | Photographers can help document the timing of flowering and fruiting along mountain trails and adjacent lands. | https://www.outdoors.org/conservation/climate-energy/citizen-science |
| Monarch Larva Monitoring Project | "The Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) is a citizen science project involving volunteers from across the United States and Canada in monarch research. It was developed in 1997 by researchers at the University of Minnesota to collect long-term data on larval monarch populations and milkweed habitat. The project focuses on monarch distribution and abundance during the breeding season in North America." | Nationwide | Photographers can conduct surveys in their local areas for milkweed and monarch butterfly larva, and the findings and images will aid in conserving monarchs and their threatened migratory phenomenon, and advance our understanding of butterfly ecology in general. | http://monarchlab.org/mlmp |
| Nature's Notebook | "Nature's Notebook is a national, online program where amateur and professional naturalists regularly record observations of plants and animals to generate long-term data sets used for scientific discovery and decision-making." | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of over 1,260 plants and animals encountered throughout the year to document seasonal changes. | https://www.usanpn.org/natures_notebook |
| Project Budburst | "Budburst brings together researchers, educators, gardeners, and citizen scientists on a shared journey to uncover the stories of how plants are affected by a changing climate. We hope that sharing these stories will increase appreciation of plants and the natural world and inspire conservation action." | Nationwide | Photographers can contribute images of five plant groups (wildflowers and herbs, deciduous trees and shrubs, conifers, evergreen trees and shrubs, and grasses) focusing on careful observations of the timing of plant life cycle events to better understand how plant species and ecosystems respond to changes in climate locally, regionally, and nationally | www.budburst.org |
| Appalachian Mountain Club | "Mountain Watch is a citizen science program engaging hikers in hands-on monitoring of air quality and climate change. Through activities along the trail and at AMC high huts, we provide opportunities to learn about air pollution’s impacts to visibility, climate trends in the mountains, and the impacts of recent climate change on plant flowering and fruiting times and other seasonal biological events." | Appalachian and Northeast mountain areas | Photographs taken from Appalachian top in conjunction with a statement of your opinion on whether the visibility on the day of the hike was "acceptable" or "unacceptable" in order to help scientists study air quality and haze pollution | https://www.outdoors.org/conservation/climate-energy/citizen-science |
| eBird | "eBird transforms a global birding community’s passion for birds into critical data for research, conservation, and education. By building tools that engage the global birding community, eBird gathers unprecedented volumes of information on where and when birds occur in the world...eBird collects ‘complete checklist‘ data, providing year-round information on all bird species at high spatial and temporal resolutions." | Worldwide | Photographers can provide images which contribute to bird distribution, abundance, habitat use, and trends by including the when, where, and how they went birding, and then fill out a checklist of all the birds seen and heard during the outing. | https://www.ebird.com |
| Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey | Many invasive species, like Garlic Mustard ( Alliaria petiolata ), are threatening the world’s natural resources, but the abundance of invasive species can vary dramatically over space and time…Through large-scale sampling, scientists can identify areas that differ in the intensity of invasion and try to understand why these differences exist. We can also compare this to variation in the native range. This may be crucial to researching new methods of control, but a large project like this could cost millions of dollars and years of work. | Nationwide | Photographers can record images of Garlic mustard plants to identify where invasive populations occur. | https://garlicmustard.wordpress.com/ |
| BeeSpotter | BeeSpotter is a partnership between citizen-scientists and the professional science community designed to educate the public about pollinators by engaging them in a data collection effort of importance to the nation. | Currently only Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio | Photographers can submit images of bees which will aid in baseline information on population status in the listed states. | http://beespotter.org/ |
| BugGuide | More than just a clearinghouse for information, this site helps expand on the natural histories of our subjects. By capturing the place and time that submitted images were taken, we are creating a virtual collection that helps define where and when things might be found. | United States and Canada | Photographers contribute images of insects, bugs, and spiders of bugs from the United States and Canada for identification and research. | www.bugguide.net |
| Bumble Bee Watch | "Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees." | North America | Photographers contribute images of bumble bees throughout the United States which will help researchers determine the status and conservation needs of bumble bees, help locate rare or endangered populations of bumble bees, and learn about bumble bees, their ecology, and ongoing conservation efforts. | www.bumblebeewatch.org |
| Celebrate Urban Birds | "Founded in 2007, Celebrate Urban Birds is a year-round project developed and launched by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology... [one] of our goals is to collect high-quality data from participants that will provide us with valuable knowledge of how different environments will influence the location of birds in urban areas." | North America | Photographers pick an urban location approximately 50'x50' to observe for ten minutes, and report all finds of focal species. Contributors are encouraged to repeat the bird watch in the same area two more times. | https://celebrateurbanbirds.org/ |
| eButterfly | "e-Butterfly documents the presence or absence of species as well as abundance through checklist data. A web-interface engages participants to submit their observations through interactive questions and answers. eButterfly encourages users to participate repeatedly by providing tools to maintain their personal observations and photo records as well as providing tools to enable them to visualize data with interactive maps, graphs, and bar charts" | North America | Photographers contribute images of butterflies and fill out a checklist of all the butterflies seen during the outing. The data may help inform how butterflies populations and phenology have changed across North America. | http://www.e-butterfly.org/ |
| eOceans | "eOceans specializes in using citizen science to describe social, ecological, environmental, policy and economic trends of marine animal populations and human use patterns. We work hard to combine citizen science data with other data, often within meta-analytical frameworks, to fill essential data gaps." | Worldwide | Any photographers that are divers, snorkelers, fishers, surfers, sailors, and researchers can contribute images of their current target areas including sharks, rays, turtles, whales, seahorses, jellyfish, seals, tourism, marine litter, shark sanctuaries, and fishing" | https://www.eOceans.org |
| iNaturalist | iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you. Get connected with a community of over 750,000 scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! What’s more, by recording and sharing your observations, you’ll create research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. | Worldwide | Photographers provide images of all species of flora and fauna into a database. Identification is confirmed by experts, which contribute to species' distribution and migration patterns. | https://www.inaturalist.org |
| Odonata Central | "OdonataCentral is designed to gather and disseminate information about dragonfly and damselfly distribution and abundance across the Western Hemisphere." | North America | Photographers use their images to document location and timing of observations of all species of dragonflies and damselflies throughout North America. | http://www.odonatacentral.org/ |
| NestWatch | "NestWatch is a nationwide monitoring program designed to track status and trends in the reproductive biology of birds, including when nesting occurs, number of eggs laid, how many eggs hatch, and how many hatchlings survive. Our database is intended to be used to study the current condition of breeding bird populations and how they may be changing over time as a result of climate change, habitat degradation and loss, expansion of urban areas, and the introduction of non-native plants and animals. " | Nationwide | After becoming a certified NestWatch monitor, photographers can contribute images while monitoring active nests. | https://nestwatch.org/ |
| North America Herpetological Education and Research Project | "The North American Herpetological Education and Research Project (HERP) database is a repository of sightings and information on North American herpetofauna contributed by amateur citizen scientists and professional herpetologists. These sightings are collected and moderated with the goal of disseminating observational herpetological data to appropriate scientific, academic, governmental, regulatory, research agencies and other approved projects. It is a great tool for helping to map distribution of North American reptiles and amphibians." | North America | Photographers can join the project and contribute images as photographic record of amphibians and reptiles encountered throughout the country which aids future conservation and understanding. | http://www.naherp.com/ |
| HerpMapper | "HerpMapper is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization designed to gather and share information about reptile and amphibian observations across the planet. Using HerpMapper, you can create records of your herp observations and keep them all in one place. In turn, your data is made available to HerpMapper Partners – groups who use your recorded observations for research, conservation, and preservation purposes. Your observations can make valuable contributions on the behalf of amphibians and reptiles." | Worldwide | Photographers can contribute images with GPS coordinates as voucher records which aid conservation research. | https://www.herpmapper.org |
| Perky-Pet ® Hummingbird Migration Map | Perky-Pet ® Hummingbird Migration Map is an interactive tool that helps citizens participate in tracking hummingbirds as the migrate throughout the year | Nationwide | Photographers can upload images of hummingbirds encountered to help update the Hummingbird Migration map in real time | http://www.birdfeeders.com/advice/bird-watching/hummingbird-migration |
| iSeahorse | " Simply put, iSeahorse is a tool for seahorse science and conservation. iSeahorse harnesses the power of ‘citizen scientists’ — anyone, anywhere in the world who sees a seahorse in the wild — to improve our understanding of these animals and protect them from overfishing and other threats. " | Worldwide | " Anyone can join iSeahorse. Whether you’re a diver, a fisher, a scientist, a seahorse enthusiast, or just on a beach holiday, you can upload your photos and observations to iSeahorse. You can help identify seahorse species. You can advocate for their protection in your ocean neighborhood." | https://www.iseahorse.org/ |
| Project Roadkill | "In Project Roadkill you can participate in a scientific project with the aim to reduce roadkill. In this project we investigate, which animals are killed on roads and which factors are influencing roadkills. Your data allows us to identify roadkill hotspots. Our vision is to mitigate those hotspots in cooperation with local authorities." | Worldwide | Photographers can contribute images of all encountered roadkill animals into a global database. | http://www.roadkill.at |
| Chronolog | Chronolog is an environmental photo monitoring project powered by citizen science. Change in the environment happens gradually, so you can help tell the story by uploading a photo to chronolog. Chronolog creates time lapses of important ecosystems to better understand how these landscapes are changing. | Continental United States | Find a Chronolog photo station and take a photo with your smartphone. Follow the instructions on the photo station. | https://www.chronolog.io/ |
