Business & Economy

Stream app turns citizens into scientists

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By CHELSEA MONGEAU
Capital News Service
LANSING – At the bottom of Chris Lowry’s research project homepage is a bold motto: “We
are all scientists.”
It’s a mantra that Lowry, an assistant professor of hydrogeology at the University of Buffalo in New York, follows while seeking to understand how water moving through watersheds changes over time across the Great Lakes region. Lowery can’t collect data from more than 50 places at once by himself, so he’s recruiting “citizen scientists” in Michigan, Wisconsin and New York. His new phone app, CrowdHydrology, allows anyone to send information on stream depths in specific locations with the swipe of a thumb. Jill Martin, an interpretive naturalist for Indian Springs Metropark in White Lake, is setting up
several stations there. An estimated 70,762 visitors came to the park in 2013.

Business & Economy

Technology helps 'citizen scientists' track invasive species

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By CHELSEA MONGEAU
Capital News Service
LANSING — Citizen scientists are getting recruited for the ongoing fight against invasive and non-indigenous species in the Great Lakes region. Michigan Sea Grant and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have built an online platform that shows where people can report the presence of non-indigenous species. And the Midwest Invasive Species Information Network has built an application for smart phones that lets the user identify and track invasive species in Michigan and elsewhere in the Midwest. There has been little to no research on the socioeconomic or ecological effects that many non-indigenous species have on the Great Lakes. But species that are termed “invasive” are known to actively damage other species native to the ecosystem.

Environment

Michigan birders ID favorites

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By CHELSEA MONGEAU
Capital News Service

LANSING – If you ask about their favorite birds of the region, they almost always have one response: “That is a really hard question.”
Bird watching is a social activity as much as an appreciation for nature’s only feathered vertebrates. According to a U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife survey, there are 47 million bird watchers over the age of 16 in the United States. About 30 percent are over the age of 55, while 16 percent are between 16 and 34. “Birds are our most-watchable form of wildlife,” said Jonathan Lutz, executive director of the Michigan Audubon Society. “We tend to think of them as ‘well they’re just birds,’ but it’s the form of wildlife more available to the most people in different settings.”

Sean Williams, a doctoral student studying zoology at Michigan State University, is no stranger to tracking down rare birds.