Public Outreach

The advertising of this project is placed in the right location, highlighted on the zooniverse website for citizen science projects. It is here that individuals who are interested in volunteering to support in data collection for various projects can easily find the description for the project and the link to the project page to get involved. Where I think public outreach is lacking, is awareness that these sorts of citizen science projects exist. Before this course I had no idea that I could have a key part in contributing to science from my very own home. I think more people would be interested in volunteering if they were just made aware of the opportunity. College classrooms are a great way to make students aware, maybe even requiring them to get involved in a project like in this course may fruition into a continued interest.

This project will definitely have a positive influence on conservation, especially in an educational way. From analyzing these old entries, it will allow for accurate informational discussion on the alterations of climate change. It can also benefit historical ecosystem ecology and diversity, anthropogenic research about whaling in that period,  and artic exploration findings. When thinking of how the impact on conservation from this project could be improved, I feel doing the same sort of historical analysis of other locations around the globe that have the potential for substantial change, should have old weather data analyzed to gain a better outlook on historical climate change on a broader scale. I think their focus at this point and goal is to collect data for now, then  incorporate this historical climate research into accurate updated climate modeling.

If I were in charge of this project I think I would manage everything the same for the old weather whaling project. It was represented well I thought and had clear information about the purpose of the project as well as tutorial instructions on how to perform the desired tasks as seen below.
I did not do much work with the Artic old weather project, which focuses more on exploration with navy and coast guard vessels. One thing I found that may be beneficial if altered is with the arctic project page at the bottom. Here one will see a title reading 'Why Scientists Need You', and after selecting the highlighted 'More Information', it will pop up with an informational page on the purpose as well as benefits from the project. The only criticism I have about it is the vimeo videos that complement the narrative. They can only been seen if one obtains a vimeo account, which may be discouraging to individuals who would rather not pay for a subscription.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Transcribing

Image
I spent an hour and a half on 11/16/17 and another hour and a half on 11/17/17 transcribing. It was challenging at some points to decipher some of the text, and unfortunately there was a few I had to pass on as illegible, since I was unable to make sense of the old writing. Below are multiple examples of what would come up from markings of interest by other individuals that I have transcribed. I also inserted some entries I found quite interesting in the process of interpreting the old whaling logs. A common marking for transcription was for weather descriptions, including this one regarding wind direction and force. It says: Light wind from the S.W. (South west). In this other example of a transcription it asks for the date, which is: October 7th 1890. Here it asked to transcribe the marking of a section that describes a ship boring, warping, tracking, or ramming in close pack ice. It reads: Westward the ice slacked and worked a mile or two to the eastward. ...
Read more

INTRODUCTION

Image
The citizen science project I decided to embark on is called the Old Weather Arctic Project. Dr. Kevin Wood is the lead investigator on this popular project, that is backed by thousands of citizen scientist volunteers across the world who are dedicating their time to help explore, mark, and transcribe historic weather entries. The task of deciphering these old whaling, exploration, and patrolling ship records from the Arctic is in much need of volunteer assistance, because it is only capable through human abilities to understand the context and diverse handwritings. By picking out relevant historical weather information and through the use of computer models, it is possible for scientists to understand clearly what past weather phenomena was like, which aids in extrapolating weather patterns for the future. This is especially important with the present uncertainty of climate change in the world as the repercussions of this alteration have began to take shape. Below is a short video fo...
Read more

Transcribing

Image
I spent over an hour this evening perusing through old log entries and transcribing the old text. Some of the text was quite challenging, especially some dates. With the aid of context clues and reading aloud, I was able to transcribe most very accurately. I have inserted some images from todays transcription session as a representation of my findings. This transcription gave me some trouble where 'did' is on the upper right, and I am assuming the individual was writing fast by the occasional untidiness in the log entry. This can be seen in some of the crosses for the T's. It reads: Saw whales, lowered twice for them, did not see them from the boats latter. This one took me a second and I had to play over the possibilities in my head, but eventually came up with the correct deciphering of snow squalls. This is a commonly asked subject for transcribing regarding wind direction and force. It reads: Blowing strong from the north .  This transcriptio...
Read more