Recruiting and retaining an army of observers: Innovative approaches to understanding ecological responses to environmental change

Background/Question/Methods

The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN; www.usanpn.org) serves science and society by promoting a broad understanding of plant and animal phenology and the relationships among phenological patterns and all aspects of environmental change. Data on plant and animal phenology across the nation are contributed to the USA-NPN National Phenology Database (NPDb) by both professionals and volunteers (aka “citizen scientists”) via an on-line phenology observing program called Nature’s Notebook.  Between 2008 and January 2014, the 3000+ active participants registered with Nature’s Notebookhave contributed over 3 million observation records for plants and animals.  But, for most science applications related to the causes and consequences of shifting phenologies, the optimal dataset would consist of repeated, relatively frequent observations of multiple individuals of the same species across its entire spatial distribution over multiple years.  This presents a particular challenge for participant recruitment and retention, because activation energy is relatively high, and sustained participation to create an optimal dataset requires a substantial commitment of time and energy across years.

Results/Conclusions

Data from the NPDb are already being used for a variety of applications related to science, conservation and resource management.  We first highlight several types of questions that can be addressed with this observing system and the resultant data, including national assessments of historical and potential future trends in phenology, regional assessments of spatio-temporal variation in organismal activity at both the population and community level, and local monitoring for invasive species detection across platforms from ground to satellite.  To address issues related to sustaining participation and garnering data of sufficient quality and quantity to enable scientific investigation of ecological patterns from sea to sky, we outline strategic approaches to maximize participant recruitment and retention that consider data needs across a variety of user groups and spatio-temporal scales.  These approaches include frequent communication with participants using a variety of tools and techniques, national and regional “campaigns” focused on acquisition of particular data for national data products, collaborative projects that support a particular research question, and capacity-building “franchises” that leverage on the Nature’s Notebook brand and associated materials to meet a variety of user needs and applications including science and education.