The National Park Service distinguishes it from citizen science, where the park or the scientist asks the question and enlists volunteers to collect data to help answer it. Practitioners around the world call this type of work community science. They can collaborate with professional scientists to find the answers, but the community still decides on what the question is. Communities sometimes have the most urgent reasons to know more about their environments. But what about the person who asks the question or identifies the problem in the first place? Is that always a degree-holding scientist or a government agency? Not necessarily.Ī scientific study can be motivated, designed, and even led by local communities. This is a hypothetical scene, but it has elements common to most park science projects: scientists, some equipment, a hypothesis or problem to test, data to be collected, an institution, and a report. Because that would lead to more collaboration between the park and the university, more thesis projects for students, and more articles published in scientific journals. This national park had agreed that increased flooding was an important problem to study, and the team was glad. They were also eager to meet the park’s field technicians, waiting up ahead, who they would train. They had to collect sediment samples right after the most recent flood if they were to successfully test their ideas about storm frequency and sedimentation. It bunched their socks around their toes as they walked across the waterlogged floodplain.īut despite the discomfort, they and their graduate students pushed on toward the study plot, GPS units in hand and backpacks laden with coring equipment. “Shlork, shlork, shlork.” The mud made a squelching noise as it tried to pull off the geologist’s rubber boots.
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