Issue 86 COSMOS – 107BY EARLY FEBRUARY, with summer barely
half done, more 186,000 square kilometres
of Australia had burned in bushfires. Lives –
human and wildlife – had been lost and homes
and habitat destroyed. For most people outside
the impact zones there’s one simple question:
what can I do?
Here’s something: sign up for the
Environment Recovery Project. A scientific
understanding of how bushland bounces
back from fire is critical, and you can help by
making observations in recently burnt areas
and uploading the data. The project wants to
get information about common as much as rare
species. It’s seeking records of:- plants (native and weeds) as seedlings or
resprouting
GETTY IMAGES; CHRIS SANDERSON; IAN CONNELLAN
changing from year to year and geographic
location to geographic location.”
With moderators trained and sightings
flowing in, Sanderson expects the pace to
pick up in following months. But already
the scientific knowledge is increasing, with
two reported range extensions recorded
through the app – one in Coppernook,
NSW, of a spotted pea-blue (Euchrysops
cnejus); and the other in Bellingen, NSW, of
an indigo flash (Rapala varuna). Sanderson
emphasises that recording the routine is
every bit as important as the rare.
“We want people to record cabbage
whites in their backyards, we want peoplewho are going on expeditions to Cape
York to record everything they can find –
and everything in between that,” he says.
“We’re not in this to be elitist.”
To illustrate the importance of ongoing
recording he cites eBird, the global bird
observation database started in 2002,
which in recent years has recorded about
100 million observations.
“The stuff they’re doing with the data
they have now just would never have
occurred to them when they started out,”
Sanderson enthuses.
“The best example is a waterbird
migration that goes down the USA west
coast. Because so much of the habitat for
waterbirds through California has been
turned into agricultural land, what they do
is actually pay farmers to flood their fields
at the right time to intercept the migration
as it comes down the coast. They use real-
time data to say, ‘okay, this is where we need
some wetlands in a week’. It’s insane.”
It might be too early to speculate about
the future uses of Australian butterfly data,
but Sanderson understands the potential.
He’s completed Butterflies Australia
workshops in several cities and there are
more to come – keep an eye on their websitefor news. And download the app and get out
there observing.
As Sanderson says: “Recording
everything you see might turn out to
be something that’s seriously useful for
scientists in the future.”
http://www.butterflies.org.auGETTING STARTED ON STAR
NOTESVisit the Star Notes page on the
Zooniverse website, preferably on a
computer (it’s difficult to navigate the
project pages on a smartphone). Click
on “Classify”. A short tutorial will take
you through all the tools in Zooniverse
that will help you with your plate
identification.
Then, all you need to do is get
hunting for the plate number on the
page. Plate numbers start with one
or two letters followed by a string of
numbers. Once you’ve found a plate
number click “Yes” and draw a box
around it. After that, transcribe the
number, and move on to your next page.http://www.zooniverse.org/projects/
projectphaedra/star-notes- animals (natives and ferals) alive or dead, or
their tracks and scats - fungi and lichen
- landscapes – especially scorch height (how
high the fires went and the amount of leaves
burnt in the canopy), shrubs and ground
cover damaged.
To begin, go towww.inaturalist.org/projects/
environment-recovery-project-australian-
bushfires-2019-2020, set up a user account –
and get out there.
Cethosia penthesileaRIGHT NOW
After the fires
CITIZEN SCIENCEZEITGEIST