Today we enter Citizen Science Month, a global celebration held every April that highlights the public’s role in scientific research. Citizen Science Month encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to participate in real-world science projects with no prior experience required. With this year being the United States of America’s 250th birthday, for Citizen Science Month SciStarter has invited the public to join 2.50 Million acts of science in April. You can find, promote and report on projects via SciStarter: https://scistarter.org/citizensciencemonth
As an Asian based non-profit representing Citizen Science in the world’s largest continent, CitizenScience.Asia is here to help if you are interested in participating but don’t know what to do. To give you ideas and start you off here is a list of 10 projects you can contribute to across Asia this month.
1. City Nature Challenge (Global and including >200 Asian cities)
Let’s start with the biggie. City Nature Challenge usually takes place during the last weekend of April, placing it at the climax of Citizen Science Month, making it a key event in the month-long celebrations. This friendly competition is run as an annual four-day global bioblitz, this year being between April 24 – 27th. Started a decade ago in California, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) has grown into an international event, motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their own cities. Participants find and photograph plants and animals in their city/region and the observations are uploaded and identified on the iNaturalist app. Last year 121 cities from 18 countries participated in Asia, and this year Asia will break the 200 city barrier. See if your city is participating here https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/participating-cities
https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/
2. SAFECAST (Japan and global)
In the environmental data collection space, SAFECAST has to be the biggest and most high-profile Citizen Science project to come out of Asia. Described by their Lead Researcher Azby Brown as a “non-ideological, non-profit, volunteer-based organization created in the days immediately following the start of the Fukushima disaster in March 11, 2011” in 15 years it has collected and published over 250M environmental measurements into the public domain. SAFECAST’s radiation information system has seen the rapid deployment of increasingly refined GPS-enabled mobile radiation detector designs, called “bGeigies”, a web-based map, smartphone applications, and other devices and software, all developed by volunteers and made freely available through open licenses. To participate can buy bGeigies and related air monitoring devices from their website here:
3. Hong Kong Jellyfish Project (Hong Kong)
Spring is the start of the jellyfish season in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Jellyfish Project (HKJP) is a citizen science initiative aimed at tracking the presence, abundance, and distribution of jellyfish in local waters. By encouraging the public to report sightings via photos, the project maps biodiversity and informs safety for water sports, filling a significant research gap. Anyone can report sightings through the HKJP website or iNaturalist, sharing photos, locations, dates, and whether they were stung. Running since 2021, the project has generated public and peer-reviewed datasets that assist in understanding local marine ecosystem shifts.
https://youtu.be/KYkO3z6RJy0?si=YxgB2DIoS-O5fJ1s
You can find out more and participate from the project website:
4. TurtleSpot Taiwan (Taiwan)
Sea turtle sightings in Taiwan are most common during the nesting season between May to October, but sightings in the spring will be useful to measure this build-up and see if climate change is altering these migrations. TurtleSpot Taiwan is a Citizen Science initiative that collects sea turtle sighting data contributed by citizen scientists. Through submitting photos the project is able to identify sea turtle individuals through their unique facial-scutes pattern and distinct characteristics of their physical appearances such as carapace or any injuries. Data from the project has been published and shared with the GBIF biodiversity database enabling scientific researchers to use this data in their studies.
5. ReefCheck Malaysia (Malaysia)
ReefCheck Malaysia conducts annual Reef Check surveys at over 300 locations in Malaysia with the help of volunteer EcoDivers. Well established, they now have over 15 years of data on the health of Malaysia’s spectacular but threatened coral reefs. They are carrying out a number of surveys this month in the Tioman and Perhentian islands and Usukan Cove in Sabah and you can contact them to see if they have any spots left on ecoaction@reefcheck.org.my.
6. DustBoy (Thailand)
In Southeast Asia, this time of year also coincides with the “burning season”, when farmers in Northern Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia burn agricultural waste, causing severe air pollution. Chiang Mai in Thailand is one of the worst-affected areas, with air quality (PM2.5. etc.) reaching hazardous levels from February to April. The 3E Research Unit at Chiang Mai University (CMU) has developed the DustBoy low-cost, portable
air quality monitoring device and has worked with schools, communities, and public spaces, to allow local volunteers to monitor their immediate surroundings. Engages citizens in Thailand to monitoring to actively participate in data collection and air quality management, and make decisions on whether to exercise outdoors, open windows, or allow children to play outside.
https://youtu.be/9dI2YCXnC9g?si=kXFPpuamdMmzeD1O
You can access the real-time open data https://www.cmuccdc.org
7. Chinese Astronomy projects (China)
The National Astronomical Data Center (NADC) of China has followed in the footsteps of Galaxy Zoo by establishing a citizen science platform that supports a number of diverse astronomical projects where citizens can crowdsource their abilities to identify patterns in the data. This has included the Gravitational Lens Search Project, Popular Supernova Project, and the Fireball Reporting Platform. As we’ve recently entered the astrological year of the Horse you can volunteer your time contributing to our knowledge of the universe through the NADC platforms or the many astronomy projects on Zooniverse.
8. Cherry Blossom Viewing (Japan)
In Kyoto, cherry blossoms typically flower from late March through early April, with peak blooming usually occurring in early April. So the start of Citizen Science Month is the perfect time to participate in what is thought to be the world’s longest running Citizen Science project. With records of Kyoto Cherry Blossom Festival going back as far as the 8th century, and have been successfully used to track climate change through the ages. It is extremely easy to participate in this long tradition, you just need to observe the fine fragrance and beauty of the sakura blossoms acting as delightful messengers of warmer months to come. You can use iNaturalist to collect this data, and in Japan there are a number of apps (even AI powered ones) predicting the best times and places to view, and also submit your own sakura spots.
9. BauhiniaWatch (Hong Kong and across Asia)
Following the Japanese sakura, April also is part of the flowering season for Hong Kong’s floral emblem the Bauhinia. Citizen Science Month also overlaps with International DNA Day on the 25th April, and last DNA Day marked the completion of the Bauhinia community genome project in Hong Kong with the publication of a complete-end-to-end genome that definitely solved the mysterious parentage of Hong Kong’s endemic symbol. While the genome is completed, the #BauhiniaWatch project mapping the flowering times of different Bauhinia species can continue, as it has been contributing useful data to the GBIF biodiversity database. In Hong Kong and surrounding regions it is the end of the flowering season of Bauhinia blakeana and Bauhinia variegata and you can capture this flowering information via iNaturalist, on social media with the hashtag #bauhiniawatch, and through the BauhiniaGenome.hk website.
https://youtu.be/TyJBALA0da0?si=CwHL1nW8ccsJ1YAf
10. Season Watch (India)
While we are in the hot seasons of South and South East Asia, the baking heat starts making us impatient for the return of the cooling monsoon rains. As summers are becoming hotter and the monsoons more unpredictable, as we have learned from the sakura and bauhinia projects mentioned above, the passing seasons are recorded in faithful detail by the life cycles of trees. Whether it’s the summer fruits of mango or the winter flowers of the Red Silk Cotton trees, who better to tell us about the changing climate than our friendly neighbourhood trees? SeasonWatch is an India-wide program that studies the changing seasons by monitoring the annual cycles of flowering, fruiting and leaf-flush of over 130 species of common trees. Contribute this pre-monsoon season by downloading the app and uploading pictures of your local trees.
If you come across interesting projects across Asia which are not mentioned please tell us about them or comment below. You can also report any acts of science you carry out this month via SciStarter to help them achieve their target of 2.50M acts of Citizen Science. Have a great Citizen Science Month!
