Citizen Science: Lending Science a Helping Hand

Have you ever heard of Citizen Science? It’s when members of the general public – you, for example! – become part of the grand project of better understanding our world. While science is about learning and making discoveries and hopefully using them to make the world a better place, you can’t do science without data.

Collecting data can be about doing experiments and seeing what the results are. But for some projects, particularly the ones that aim to understand our environment, or the effects of climate change, or the habits and habitats of our native animals, collecting data is about making observations. Looking at things. Listening to things. Writing down what you notice.

‘Citizen Science’, by Frits Ahlefeldt. Used with permission.

Sometimes, we have a lot of data, but not enough people to look at it – perhaps we have a audio recorder set up in a particular area, listening for bird noises, but we need some more pairs of ears to listen to the recordings and mark where and when the noises are being made. Or perhaps there are camera traps set up to track wildlife in a particular area – but we need some more pairs of eyes to look at the photos and sort out the bandicoots from the housecats.

Sometimes, we don’t have the data yet, and we need some more pairs of hands to help us collect it. Perhaps we are tracking the movement of koalas, and need people to take photos of any koalas they see on their daily walks. Or maybe we want to look at water purity, and we need people to take photos of the rivers and seas and creeks near them, taking particular note of the colour of the water and what sorts of plants grow in it or beside it.

And sometimes, we have the data, but it’s old and fragile and in need of people to transcribe it or to photograph it and digitise it.

There are so many ways you can help real scientists make important discoveries, from your home or from you backyard or on your lockdown walks. To celebrate National Science Week, we thought we are sharing some of our favourites.

Ask a Scientist: Trees and plants

Welcome to Ask a Scientist, where we answer your most pressing science questions! Today, we are joined by PhD student Lizzie Lieschke and Senior Postdoc Dr Hendrik Falk, to answer two questions about green and growing things.

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My question for the scientist is how many trees are there left in the world today? – Harriet, 8

This is a tricky question to answer as it would take too long to count every single one, and people keep chopping down trees, but also planting new ones.

Because we can’t count them all, this means we have to use models to estimate the number. We can use satellite images to see how much area of the world is covered in trees. Then we send people to count trees in a small area. We can then use maths to calculate how many trees there would be if all the world had the same number as the small are. When a group of people did this, they said there were 3 trillion trees in the world! – Lizzie Lieschke

This link has a video that shows you how the trees are distributed across the world.

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If the plant goes out of the space, how will it grow? – Harriet, 8

Are you asking about plants growing too big for the space they are in, or about growing plants in space?

If you want to know about plants outgrowing their space, you could try that in an experiment. Take a plant and restrict its space and see what happens.

What I expect to happen depends on what the plant is missing. Typically plants try to grow towards unoccupied spaces. If the plant is missing light, it will try to grow towards any remaining light spot. On the other hand, if is lacking water or nutrients it may die before it can grow roots long enough to find a new water source.

As for growing plants in space, scientists have grown plants on the International Space Station, so the plants don’t need gravity – but you still need to provide air (carbon dioxide), water, salts, warmth! – Hendrik Falk

This link has a video about growing plants on the International Space Station!

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Lizzie Lieschke is a PhD student and scientist studying why people get sick with cancer. She is researching how one of our genes protects our normal cells from becoming cancer. She hopes that by gaining more knowledge into how this gene works, we can make our current treatments for cancer more effective.

Lizzie has always had a passion for learning about the natural world. In Grade 1, her teacher suggested she should become a palaeontologist, and when she came back from a holiday, her sister told her she needed to take more photos of people than of rocks! At university Lizzie had a hard time deciding on which science she liked best, so she tried to do them all, by taking subjects in biology (animal, human and plant), geology, climate science, and chemistry. However, when she had the opportunity to work in a cancer research lab over the summer, she found this was what she was meant to be doing. She loves how as a scientist you are constantly learning, and that what we do aims to benefit others.

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Dr Hendrik Falk’s work covers the first steps in creating a new treatment for cancer patients. In drug discovery, scientists identify and refine molecules that modulate a specific function of cancer cells or the rest of the body, for instance to boost the immune system to better fight cancer. This work builds on the innovative findings of other researchers, and it is the exchange with other scientists that he enjoys the most. 

Sharing his knowledge with students is a great way to nurture their interest in the world!