Environmental Citizen Science offers a wonderful way to celebrate Earth Day and help us all to better know our environment. Youth Learning as Citizen Environmental Scientists (YLACES) provides grants to equip youth to participate in environmental citizen science and better learn to think scientifically by doing research projects. Our next grant cycle closes June 15, 2020. YLACES encourages youth to celebrate Earth Day by going outside and contributing to citizen science while complying with social distancing requirements.
It has been 50 years since April 22 was first declared Earth Day as more than 20 million Americans took to the streets and campuses to protest the environmental degradation resulting from 150 years of unregulated industrial development in the US.
Since the first Earth Day, much progress has been made with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the nation’s landmark environmental laws including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Toxic Substances Control Act, among others.
Today much work remains to address the ongoing environmental threats that we still face. One terrific way for us all to take an active role in protecting the environment is to help strengthen scientific understanding of natural systems through citizen science. Citizen science has been described as the crowdsourcing of monitoring and data collection to increase environmental knowledge. Even with the current global Coronavirus pandemic, we can take part in citizen science, as long as we follow local health and safety guidelines.
The GLOBEObserver app is one way to start providing your contribution among many other opportunities to engage in citizen science through GLOBE, iNaturalist, and others.
Please send YLACES (ylaces@ylaces.org) your photos and stories about your Earth Day Citizen science activities.
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