Public Participation in Research Back in Vogue with Ascent of "Citizen Science" (preview)

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A modest effort to enlist amateur bird-watchers in the cause of ornithology wound up producing a fire hose of data and helping rewrite the rules of science

By Hillary Rosner

Image: PAUL NELSON

In Brief

• Automated-sensor networks monitor much of our environment, but some data collection in the digital age still requires the efforts and close analyses of phalanxes of context-sensitive human beings who can help solve problems of scale.
• A field called citizen science, which involves public participation in research, marshals laypeople's observations, often by way of high-tech consumer devices and machines.
• Based at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, in collaboration with the National Audubon Society, eBird is one of the most mature such efforts. It and its ilk have yielded academic-caliber results in astronomy, computer science and public health, while giving skilled amateurs more opportunities to contribute.

In the 230-acre forest beyond steve kelling's wall-to-wall office windows, 50 species of migratory birds?warbling vireos, rose-breasted grosbeaks, cedar waxwings?have arrived overnight. On this early May afternoon their calls ring through the forest in a giant songbird mash-up. How Kelling, or anyone here at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., can concentrate on work is a mystery.

Of course, the scene beyond the window is the work. Kelling pulls up an animated map on his laptop. It is the U.S., etched in white against a black background. A bar below the map shows the passage of time, a year in total. At first, nothing happens. Suddenly, around April, a burst of orange appears in southern California. It spreads like flames to the north and east, until the entire western third of the country is ablaze, glowing and flickering in various shades of orange and white. Then it reverses, the color vanishing from north to south, until, by November, the whole map is dark again. We have just watched the annual migration of the western tanager.

This article was originally published with the title Data on Wings.

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