Chandra Clarke

Offering Whatever Light I Can

The Citizen Science Center Has Moved!

You're probably wondering how you got here. I'm Chandra Clarke, and I ran CitizenScienceCenter.com as a separate blog from 2012-2020. I thoroughly enjoyed spreading the word about dozens of fabulous and important projects. The movement is strong and widespread now, and frankly more important than ever, given the climate change challenges we face. I'm proud of the role I played in getting citizen science into the mainstream, and I want to thank you all for your support of this blog and its related social media. Rather than just abandoning the blog, I decided to merge it with my personal blog for posterity.

I am now a full time science fiction fantasy author and I also work part time for Ecoactionists.com when I'm not helping my partner run the Turns & Tales boardgame cafe.

Here's where you can find a definition of citizen science:

About Citizen Science

I broke down projects according to their commitment levels:

 

And of course, if you have any questions, you can always contact me. Cheers!

 

A New Book… And Some CitSciCenter News

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I’m very excited to share something with you today.

I have a novel coming out on April 7, the first of two (!) this year. It’s a near future science-fiction story, called Echoes of Another. Here’s the cover:

Here’s the plot:

In the groove. In the zone. A period of intense focus and high performance that feels effortless. Flow. In a near future Toronto, a naïve young scientist named Kel invents a device to produce the mysterious state of ‘flow’ on demand, hoping to unleash humanity’s creative potential on our greatest problems. But the prototype she invents to record and then play back the neurological and physiological states associated with flow can be used to record other mind-body states. Her prototype is stolen, duplicated, and put to use for an astonishing range of causes, some good, and some very bad. As Kel struggles to regain control of her device, it threatens to destroy her legacy and upend the lives of several others, until all uses of the technology converge on the most unexpected and unintended consequence of all.

It is available for pre-order right now as a Kindle ebook, and as a paperback.

I’d love it if you’d share this post on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media, or email it directly to any friends you think would like this book. Especially if you happen to know any book reviewers!

And now for some Citizen Science Center news. As you may have guessed by the book announcement above, I have a number of other projects on the go these days, and I think the time has come to wind this blog down.

I’ve been publishing Citizen Science Center since 2012 (!!!), and I have thoroughly enjoyed spreading the word about dozens of fabulous and important projects. The movement is strong and widespread now, and frankly more important than ever, given the climate change challenges we face. I’m proud of the role I played in getting citizen science into the mainstream, and I want to thank you all for your support of this blog and its related social media.

Thus, the site that was up at citizensciencecenter.com is now archived here, at my main site.

Thanks again, and stay awesome,

Chandra

There’s an App for …the Amazon

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Guest Post by Vanessa Eyng

The Amazon biodiversity is impressive. Once it comes to fish’s biodiversity, it is even more impressive. The amount of species in the Amazon is huge. The relation between local communities and fishes creates cultural patterns, implies in specifics knowledge and skills, generates income, besides being the fishes the main source of protein for these communities. All this biodiversity is spreed in seven countries and it is connected through water. Rivers, fishes and its migration patterns show us that. Fishes can go from one lake to another, back and forth. And also can go from the river source to the mouth. Some catfishes are responsible for the longest migration known. And to migrate, fishes rely on rivers connectivity. These migration fishes represent around 80% of the commercial fisheries of Amazon. But the data available to understand the fisheries and the migration patterns is not representative for the entire area. The scale of the Amazon represents a specific challenge, even more with a series of major infrastructure projects planned or already implemented in the Amazon.

Citizen science is a growing field, with potential to promote a closer dialogue with citizen demands and concerns, through participatory methodologies. Its approach, developing replicable technologies, could collaborate with large scale monitoring projects, such as the Amazon. And local people participation in conservation projects have been determinant to the success of these strategies, respecting the fact that their livelihood depends on it.

With these approaches, the project Citizen Science for the Amazon put together inhabitants, researchers and students from different parts of the Amazon. All of them with unique environmental knowledge and specific conservation concerns. Through an app, named Ictio, the project goal was to test this new technology, creating a network that could use the data generated in sustainable management and conservation projects. Looking at the big picture, the project seeks to understand how fish migrations work in the Amazon basin and what environmental factors influence these migrations. In combination with the citizen science approach, it helps to fill in information gaps, drastically reduces the cost of gathering this information, and empowers citizens as guardians of their aquatic ecosystems.

The project Citizen Science for the Amazon was implemented in 15 sites, each of them using specific methodologies. The communities were present to app Ictio, used it and discussed the data generated. Three meetings brought together users from different locations, creating a space to share knowledge, discuss conservation strategies and also meet with each other! Until December 2019, 224 users from uploaded 3,092 observation lists, registering 24.000 fishes and 994 tons of fishes! These numbers are from Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, in a scale basin effort without precedents.

The project is worked to develop a network of partners from different countries, https://www.amazoniacienciaciudadana.org/espa%C3%B1ol/socios/ , joining expertise from of civil society organizations, government entities, universities, research centers and foundations, and other collaborative networks.