How do science, citizen science, and nature reinforce each other to address social issues? This key topic was the focus of a podcast recorded last summer by Amsterdamse Bos (Amsterdam Forest) and the Athena Institute, a research institute of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Last week, the podcast was published, and given the interesting insig...

Is it strange to live still optimistically and in hope in times of the polycrisis? This question was posed at this year's Ars Electronica Festival in Linz with the theme HOPE. We attended the festival in early September, and in this blog, we'll briefly discuss the workshop "Plant Life on the POSTCITY Roof" led by botanist Friedrich Schwarz. Togethe...

Suriname has roughly 14 languages - the official and most spoken language is Dutch. One of Suriname's indigenous languages is Trio, which is spoken by the Tarëno, a conglomeration of analogous subgroups and distinct Amerindian groups (Mirella Nankoe, 2017). The total Tarëno population (Tarëno means "people from here") in Suriname can...

The AmphiBiom project from BOKU Vienna focuses on comprehensive protection of the green toad and has therefore launched a new amphibian Citizen Science project: AmphiApp. SPOTTERON had the honor of visualizing the project and designing the Citizen Science App AmphiApp, the amphi.at website, the logo and visual ide...

The 9th Living Knowledge Conference 2022 took place in Groningen, Netherlands, from the 29th of June to the 1st of July. The Living Knowledge Network, the organizer of the conference, is a vital actor in the fields of Science Communication, Community-based Research, and Citizen Science. The Network works closely with Civil Society Organisations (CS...

Humans and birds have a very long shared history. We have grown them for poultry, we appreciate their beauty, and in some cultures, we had even worshipped them as gods. We have been observing birds, their behaviour, their flight and migration patterns since prehistoric times, many cave drawings around the globe being proof. To this day, humans...

Citizen Science is leading to remarkable developments worldwide, and in Australia in particular. Between bushfires and a global pandemic, and being a country that faces the effects of climate change on a large scale, it has seen an influx in citizen-driven science projects in recent times, uniting people to achieve a common goal. This October, the ...

At SPOTTERON, we create Citizen Science Apps for a wide array of scientific fields. One of the most exciting topics is phenology - the study of periodically recurring phenomena in nature's annual cycle - and how global warming affects the developmental stages of animals and plants. Volunteer monitoring of nature, the weather and the seasons date ba...

I am a Citizen Scientist. I have been one since I was eight years old, albeit without ever hearing the term even once. I was interested in nature, the environment, and I spent hours after hours exploring the wildlife in ponds, my parents' garden, forests, and even brown land. (Oh, I love brown land, I still sneak through construction fences to explore them sometimes :)

We talked to Thomas Hübner from the Central Station for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) during the "Long Night of Research" in the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, Austria about the new phenology Citizen Science project "Nature's Calendar" about the the 10 phenological seasons in the project and what Citizen Scientists can observe in the Citizen Science App for Android and IOS.

We are really happy to present to you: the very first CITIZEN SCIENCE ADVENTURE! The idea has been lingering in our heads for quite some time now and we were finally able to get this new and exciting project started. The kick-off was made by our beloved Philipp Jonathan with a quick introduction to phenology and a common snowdrop he spotted in the Nature's Calendar app in a viennese parc this weekend.