2019-BioBlitz! Citizen Science @ McCloskey Natural Area

Start Date-End Date: 08/08/2019-08/08/2019 Land Manager Office: City of Greeley - Parks and Recreation Land Manager Contact: Karen Scopel Funding Partner: Programmatic Partner: Summary: Collect data about plants and animals in Greeley on this weekday project. Description: Project photo by Karen Scopel. Where You'll Be: Located in Northwest Greeley, the 48-acre McCloskey Natural Area features the Sheep Draw Creek (a tributary of the Cache La Poudre River), the regional Sheep Draw Trail, and a long-standing history. The area was once used by settlers for farming and sheep grazing, and local stories tell of Native Americans travelling the creek by canoe. In 2017, VOC volunteers helped build the soft-surface Firefly Trail in the northern part of the area. What You'll Do: Join us on a Thursday for one of VOC's very first Citizen Science projects! This form of outdoor stewardship involves collecting data about the area's plants, animals, and insects to support the Greeley Natural Areas program in their site management strategies. Volunteers ages 12+ will have the opportunity to explore McCloskey Natural Area's variety of habitats and learn about the area's plant and wildlife as they observe and record their sightings through the free iNaturalist app. Breakfast and lunch will be provided, making this a fun and easy way to care for Colorado with the whole family. Why It Matters: Your data collection will help inform the Greeley Natural Areas about the biodiversity of the McCloskey Natural Area from plants to birds, mammals, and invertebrates so they can develop and implement effective strategies for managing the site. These methods may also be replicated at other natural areas throughout Greeley, taking your impact even further! Need-to-Know Details: Minors under 16 must be accompanied by an adult 21 years or older on single-day projects. Cancellation:Our partners rely on VOC volunteers to accomplish critical stewardship needs, and our projects often have wait lists. If you need to cancel, pleasecontact Emily Schaeferat 303-715-1010 ext. 116 as soon as possible so we can free your spot for another volunteer and have a full workforce. About Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) is the state's oldest, largest, and leading outdoor stewardship nonprofit organization. Founded in 1984 to motivate and enable people to become active stewards of Colorado's natural resources, VOC has engaged nearly 120,000 people in more than 1,000 volunteer projects for a donated labor value of $24 million. Through award-winning youth and volunteer programs, leadership training, capacity-building programs, and collaborative efforts with nonprofits and land management agencies, VOC is an invaluable resource in Colorado, especially as our outdoor stewardship needs are approaching near-crisis levels. For more information, visit www.voc.org or call 303-715-1010. Latitude/Longitude: 40.4181, -104.794213 Additional Information: Camping Available: No Physical Difficulty: Easy High Altitude Project: No Desired Number of Volunteers: 25 Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 18 Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 2 Total Volunteer Days: 20 Total Unique Volunteers: 20 Total Volunteer Hours: 108 Staff Hours: 14 Stipend Hours: 0 Project Summary: The McCloskey Natural Area BioBlitz was just the 2nd ever citizen science project done by VOC. As such, there were quite a few important lessons learned. See below for more discussion on these. In general it was a success but there should be some changes made to future iterations. Twenty-two volunteers met in the amphitheater behind the Greeley Family Funplex at 8:00am. They had a light breakfast, and because the site was so compact we decided not to set up a lunch station until lunch time. Greeley counterpart Karen Scopel provided a tutorial on iNaturalist, the app volunteers used to record species observations on the site. Karen remained at the amphitheater to help identify species through the app as photos were uploaded by volunteers. Several volunteers also came back to peruse the ID books and to ask questions of Karen and another city naturalist. During lunch, an employee from the city's stormwater division talked about the importance of natural areas like McCloskey in improving water quality. After lunch, about half of the volunteers left, and the rest went with a grass expert to identify grass species on site. By 2pm the project was a wrap. In total, 800 observations were made by volunteers. At least 2 noxious weed species were identified that were not known to be present on site, providing an immediate benefit to city staff who will now target these for eradication. Successes and Challenges: Unless organized around a hike (see "BioBlitz! Citizen Science @ Conejos Canyon" as an example of this) citizen science projects should not be full day events. Volunteers were visibly bored by noon, and by 2pm the last few participants had left the site. Except for the die-hard naturalist, there is only so long someone can wander around a 20-acre natural area taking pictures of plants and bugs. This type of project may lend itself to a flexible volunteering model, where natural area visitors can download the app and make observations as the walk across the site for a short period of time. This would just require a laminated informational sign at access points (and may not even require a staff member to be present). The app itself has some interesting quirks. It can be used offline, but in locations where there is good cell service the app tries to help identify species in real time using identification algorithms with the photo the user takes. This can be useful, especially for those not familiar with taxonomy. But it has kinks still and may identify a finch as a sunflower and it requires the user to have enough knowledge to broadly distinguish between groups. The app will also try to upload photos in real time, which can be a massive drain on a data plan. Karen had relied on a wireless signal to be able to view observations in real time on her computer, but the wi-fi (and then data hotspot) connection was spotty. The observations and photos themselves are useful, but Karen and her staff will have many hours of work after the fact to identify all of the species that volunteers didn't identify. The app has a bit of a learning curve in general and it would be beneficial to encourage users to do a practice run in their neighborhood park before coming on a VOC BioBlitz. This was a weekday project. It attracted a mixture of corporate employees doing company sponsored volunteer work, parents with their children, and a few unemployed young adults. It was surprising that there weren't more retired adults, and this may be a demographic to target harder in the future. The light work and weekday urban setting would seem to be attractive to them. Lastly, it may be prudent to ask volunteers on future bioblitzes to focus on a certain category of biota. Even in a small, urban natural area, there were likely 200 unique species photographed. If volunteers had focused on insects or grasses or amphibians it may have been easier to inform them of what to look for. As it were, they were just "let loose" in the park, and the project seemed to lack clear objectives. In this case Karen just wanted a general overview of biota but we may have had better engagement if we provided more boundaries. Lessons Learned: Special Notes: Stewardship Education: The nature of BioBlitzes means the whole project is a learning experience. There is a ton of potential to explore these events as outdoor classes in taxonomy. Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers: Description of Accidents/Incidents: One volunteer suffered a serious migraine mid-morning. VOC project staff learned that his med kit had Advil that expired in 2003. Volunteer waited for the migraine to abate and left early. Description of Work Completed: