I was pretty good at the sciences when I went to school – all apart from chemistry that is. Physics, biology, all the other bits though? I was there 👏 for 👏 it 👏. That being said, I went for a career laden with media and computers and telly and business, which are all things that have very little to do with the sciences, especially the life sciences. ✓ Project Bucket List is all about ways that I can do things that I’d always wanted to do, but never actually sat down and committed to, and contributing to the scientific field was one of them.
What I originally wrote down was “discover a new species“, but following my SMART goal system, discovering a new species isn’t really within my control, so it’s not really Achievable. Therefore, I dropped down a peg on my quest for scientific immortality (I’d’ve called whatever it was Danicus Bucketensis, in case you actually cared, which I know you don’t), and decided to leave it at contribute.
Luckily enough, scientists across the world take advantage of whippersnappers like me who want to get involved, but don’t have the career, funding, ability, or even, in my case, intelligence, to actually make a big impact on the scientific world. These people are citizen scientists.
When it comes to data, qualitative and quantitative are often the most difficult to find, so citizen science projects are often very simple. Rather than ask you to figure out the chemical compounds within the ears of smaller subspecies of rabbits, citizen scientists might be instead asked to count how many droppings are found in each pile. I’m not sure what the scientist in question would be researching if they wanted you to look into rabbits ears and count their poop, but I guess that’s why I’m not a real scientist.
This means that scientists can gather very large quantities of data for very little cost, as volunteers across their selected space all offer up reports on specific, easy to measure (or identify) things.
The great thing about all of this, is that becoming a citizen scientist has a very low barrier to entry, and you get to help science along the way. In my case, all I needed was a mobile telephone with a camera and access to the internet.
The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland does this amazing thing every year, where they invite plant lovers from around the isles to engage with their group and help them contribute towards the scientific collection of data. This year, 2024/2025, was their 14th round, around 3,000 citizen scientists up and down the UK set off in the cold bleak winter to count flowers. Altogether we submitted around 25,000 reports, the most common of which was the daisy (Bellis perennis – see how when I use Latin names I appear smarter?).
The idea is that on a very specific period of time, the 29th of December to the 1st of January, people head outdoors to a specific marked area and count all the flowers in bloom. The BSBI can then count these blooming flowers and track how species blooms change across the years, and across locations. They suspect that climate change is affecting how flowers react to changes in conditions, and this allows us a greater understanding of what sort of impact those changes are having on our ecosystem.
You sign up on their website to participate, and they make it this big exciting thing that everybody looks forward to. On the 4 days of the campaign, they sent update emails out giving information about the days events. They released an interactive map, which showcased all the different reports. You can click and explore them, and see all the little pictures that people have posted alongside the latin names of all the different flowering plants. It’s nice to see just how many people were involved, looking at a full map of Britain, completely covered in flowers.
In all honesty, I’m not a botanist. I don’t know many plants names apart from Taraxacum, and Monstera, so I took my trusty friend, Google Lens. If you’re unfamiliar with Google Lens, here’s the quick rundown. It’s image recognition, bottled up in a nifty little app. Depending on what you scan, it can translate text in real time, copy and paste handwriting, identify places and animals, and find products. It uses Convolutional Neural Networks, or CNNs, a type of AI model that specialises in analysing images.
What it means is that you essentially have a live image search in your pocket, and if something exists, is pretty damn likely that Google knows about it. It’s not always perfect, but it’ll get you close enough where you can do a bit of your own research to confirm that you have the right match.
Just look at how easy it was for me, an idiot without a PhD in rabbit poop, to contribute to science!
And so, we stumbled our way around the park we’d selected, scanning photos of plants, naming them, and uploading pictures for the nice scientists back in the labs to count. Look at how chuffed I look, doing science without even wearing a lab coat.
Not long after the count, they came back with data. You can read the whole thing here, but in summary – we did an amazing job counting, and we all deserve ice-cream. The report suggests that plants are adapting to changing weather patterns. Warmer winters mean that more plants flower in December/January, extending their flowering periods. Most biological species have triggers that create actions. For example, cold weather induces dormancy in plants. 52% of the recorded species were actually flowering later than they usually do, meaning that instead of going dormant, they’d just stayed awake all winter!
Not only that, another trigger for species may be warmer temperatures, meaning it’s time to wake up. Around a quarter of species flowered earlier than expected. This doesn’t just mean that there’s more flowers at Christmas though. It has big implications for pollination, as pollinators may not be out and about to help these plants out.
The other thing is that a whole bunch of the plants were non-native. I’m talking half. If this information doesn’t worry you, it probably should. That’s not me taking a nationalist stance or anything, non-native species compete with native species, and can often lead to extinction. They’re all small changes that we’ve been tracking for years (see how I can say “we”, because I’m a part of science now?).
Anyway, I’m not going to make this a soapbox for environmentalism. My stance on industrialisation is that we should shut off all the machines and give everybody a sword and a quest, and this isn’t really the platform to spread such revolutionary ideas. If you want to discuss this further, meet me under the tall bridge at midnight.
Citizen science is a great way to participate in the net good of the world. It’s often easy, it’s always helpful, and it’s eye openingly interesting. The other joy is that you get to smugly saunter around your place of work talking about your recent scientific study. It makes you insufferable, which is how we should all aspire to be.
I will admit, I found it a little difficult to actually find citizen science projects. There are a couple of directories and lists online, but I found that many of them did not apply to my location or skillset. I had to reach out to a few people I know in the nature education space and ask for suggestions, and even then, there isn’t an easy to access resource with everything in. To help you out, I’ll list down the ones that I’ve come across.
BSBI New Year Plant Hunt – Go out at the end of December to a place near you and count some flowers. They’ll tally everybody’s data up and churn out some details about how climate change is affecting flowers, and extrapolate information to figure out how that’ll effect the rest of the planet.
Waxcap Watch – Who doesn’t like mushrooms? Cordyceps victims, probably, but that doesn’t include you, so join Plantlife every Autumn as they count the number of waxcaps to create a map of ancient meadows and grasslands, which can be used in the fight against carbon emissions!
Big Garden Birdwatch – One of the biggest citizen science projects in the UK. Sit in your garden (or balcony, or park) for an hour, count how many birds land in front of you. They’ll track bird populations and spot declining species. They can then act on this information, making sure that habitats are protected, and birds are too!
The Big River Watch – Twice a year, The River Trust ask people to spend 15 minutes to stand by a river, and answer questions on an app. They’ll ask about wildlife, water flow, and any signs of pollution. They map the areas that need the most help, and make a plan accordingly, so if you’ve got a crappy river near you, this could be a chance to draw attention to it!
City Nature Challenge – Hosted by the Natural History Consortium, have a check if your city is involved. You go out and ID wildlife in your area. Nottingham City found 790 different species last year, that’s crazy! They do it all through the iNaturalist app, which is another great large scale citizen science project!