Print PageProject Budburst is a citizen science program aimed at engaging the general public, K-12 as well as more scientifically advanced audiences in documenting how native and ornamental plants are changing their growing season phenology in response to changes in weather, climate and habitats across the United States. The advent of mobile phone technology offers many unprecedented opportunities to enhance the efficiency of our program, to improve data accuracy, and to engage new audiences. In this project we worked together to develop and test new software to evaluate the potential of this technology for citizen science programs aimed at general non-technical audiences, and specifically for Project Budburst. We wished to examine how practical this technology could be in acquiring accurate data for Budburst, and what advantages it offers for our target K-12 and general audiences.
Results/Conclusions
We were able to demonstrate that it is in fact possible and practical to develop mobile applications that can be used to collect all the data required for Project Budburst. Data can be seamlessly integrated into our online databases, and for users it offers many concrete advantages over previous technologies including much more efficient submission of data, and greater automation and simplification of environmental monitoring.
