The Citizen Science Association defines citizen science as "the involvement of the public in scientific research – whether community-driven research or global investigations." By participating in one of the projects listed below, everyone can make a contribution to science and increase their knowledge regardless of their background or geographical location.
Please Note: Many of the projects require free accounts to participate.
Citizen Science Projects
Auburn Squirrel Project
Researchers at the Auburn Squirrel Project are compiling data on the amount of time the eastern gray squirrels spend scatterhoarding food across their range to look for diference in adaptations to local environments and winter conditions. Volunteer to watch gray squirrels in your area and collect data on what they are doing, based on predefined behaviors.
Bumble Bee Watch
Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees. Because these animals are widely distributed, the best way to keep track of them is with a group of volunteers across the country equipped with cameras. Upload your photos of bumble bees to help researchers determine the status and conversation needs of bumble bees and locate rare or endangered populations of bumble bees.
FeederWatch
Project FeederWatch is a November-April survey of birds that visit backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locations in North America. Count the birds in an area with plantings, habitat, water or food that attracts birds and enter your counts online. An annual participation fee is required, which helps fund the project.
Great Lakes Worm Watch
Although new research is emerging about the effects of exotic earthworm invasions, very little is known about the distributions of earthworm and earthworm species across the region. While this type of distributional information is very valuable, it is very labor intensive and it is difficult for researchers to get funding to do this kind of work. Citizen scientists can help in this effort by conducting earthworm surveys in forests and other habitats in your area and reporting that data to Great Lakes Worm Watch.
Great Sunflower Project
Help the Great Sunflower Project collect data on pollinators in yards, gardens, schools and parks to help researchers determine where pollinator service is strong or weak compared to averages. Options include joining the flagship Great Sunflower Project Program, joining the Pollinator Friendly Plants and Places program, and taking the Great Pollinator Habitat Challenge.
HerpMapper
HerpMapper gathers and shares information about reptile and amphibian observations across the planet. Using HerpMapper, you can create records of your herp observations and make the data available to HerpMapper Partners – groups who use your recorded observations for research, conservation, and preservation purposes.
iNaturalist
Every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. Findings are shared with scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to help scientists find and use your data. Download the free iNaturalist mobile app to make sharing data easy.
Journey North
Journey North is a program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum that provides an easy entry point to citizen science, with simple protocols, strong online support, and immediate results. Citizens can report sightings of various animals species, which are mapped in real-time as waves of migrations move across the continent.
Lost Ladybug Project
Across North America ladybug species composition is changing. Over the past twenty years native ladybugs that were once very common have become extremely rare, and ladybugs from other parts of the world have greatly increased both their numbers and range. Help the Lost Ladybug Project in finding out where all the ladybugs have gone by photographing any ladybugs in your area and uploading the photos to the Lost Ladybug Project website.
NestCams
NestCams is a project of the Konrad Lorenz Research Station. In this project, you will watch videos of greylag geese and northern bald ibis on their nests. By identifying what the birds do, you will help us discover more about their breeding behaviour.
OceanEYEs
NOAA scientists need your help to count fish and improve data used in management of the Hawaiʻi “Deep 7” bottomfish fishery. With your help, it may now become possible to analyze and annotate all of these images to produce training data for computer vision algorithms and to provide a more accurate representation of fish abundance in Hawaiʻi.
Penguin Watch
Penguin Watch is a citizen science Web site trying to understand the lives of penguins. Citizen scientists can help annotate hundreds of thousands of images of wildlife in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean taken over the past three years.
Project Noah
Project Noah is a global citizen science platform to discover, share and identify wildlife. Publish your favorite wildlife photographs of organisms in their natural habitat, and share these photos with the Project Noah global community. Choose from one of the many missions or create your own mission.
Wildwatch Kenya
Wildwatch Kenya seeks to count, identify and track the giraffes in conservation field sites, along with the other animals that share the habitat, to better understand the behavior, movements, and population numbers of the wildlife found there. Citizen scientists are being called to help researchers look through the tens of thousands of photos taken by trail cameras.