An official website of the United States government
Abstract: Citizen science is an ideal vehicle for building smart and connected communities, particularly in underrepresented and urban populations. It provides the means for a community to become vested in its local ecosystem. It simultaneously engages students and schools, public and private stakeholders, educators, and scientists. It plays an essential role in empowering local communities to restore biodiversity, ecological productivity and ecosystem services. Just as citizen science is a means by which a community can help form its ecological future, citizen policymaking is the analog by which a community can help form its environmental future. The practice of policy connects the diverse disciplines necessary for informed decision-making, such as science, law, technology, economics and social sciences. The combination of science and policymaking, a staple of environmental governance, creates for student, teacher and community member a creative venue for applied learning that connects scientific discovery with civic engagement, scientific method with policy governance, and all-important STEM skills with all the above. Through a curriculum that explores the combined role of monitoring technologies, data collection and decision-making one can demonstrate the processes that harmonize STEM-based and ecological knowledge with policy priorities and environmental necessity for the greatest societal benefit. For students in particular, such lessons open the door to the interdisciplinary thinking and applied value of STEM in the professions. Just as our schools should be unrivaled training grounds for citizen science, so too should they be the hub for the applied interdisciplinary learning and skills that animate and enliven the principles of democracy and law. Key words: STEM education, citizen science, environmental restoration, smart and connected communities.
more »
« less
Rich local knowledge despite high transience in an Arctic community experiencing rapid environmental change
Abstract Environmental monitoring and long-term research produce detailed understanding, but its collective effort does not add up to ‘the environment’ and therefore may be difficult to relate to. Local knowledge, by contrast, is multifaceted and relational and therefore can help ground and complement scientific knowledge to reach a more complete and holistic understanding of the environment and changes therein. Today’s societies, however, are increasingly fleeting, with mobility potentially undermining the opportunity to generate rich community knowledge. Here we perform a case study of High Arctic Svalbard, a climate change and environmental science hotspot, using a range of community science methods, including a Maptionnaire survey, focus groups, interviews and cognitive mapping. We show that rich local knowledge on Svalbard could indeed be gathered through community science methods, despite a high level of transience of the local population. These insights complement environmental monitoring and enhance its local relevance. Complex understanding of Svalbard’s ecosystems by the transient local community arose because of strong place attachment, enabling environmental knowledge generation during work and play. We conclude that transience does not necessarily prevent the generation of valuable local knowledge that can enrich and provide connection to scientific understanding of the environment.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2020126
- PAR ID:
- 10537171
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2662-9992
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The Colorado SCience and ENgineering Inquiry Collaborative for Rural K12 Outreach (SCENIC Colorado) is investigating an educational infrastructure for supporting engineering and science learning and identity formation as part of an outreach program with rural Colorado high schools. This research takes the rural context into careful consideration. While rural places are often described by their deficits (Reagan et al., 2019), this study operationalizes place-based pedagogy and the theoretical framework of rural cultural wealth (Crumb et al., 2022) to conceptualize and engage rural places from an asset-based perspective. We believe rural places can be rich environments for engineering and science learning. Therefore, we aspire to support high school students with the development of soil or air quality inquiry projects that are relevant to their local rural communities. Situated within a larger study on the SCENIC outreach program and its impact on student participation in and identification with engineering and science, this paper focuses more narrowly on place-based engineering with students in the rural context. The research questions are: What aspects of the outreach program's educational infrastructure enable place-based science and engineering inquiry? What aspects of place—their locality's history and culture—inform rural students' selection of environmental monitoring topics to investigate? How does conducting place-based environmental monitoring projects contribute to rural students’ engineering and science identity development?more » « less
-
Educational research supports incorporating active engagement into K-12 education using authentic STEM experiences. While there are discipline-specific resources to provide students with such experiences, there are limited transdisciplinary opportunities that integrate engineering education and technological skill-building to contextualize core scientific concepts. Here, we present an adaptable module that integrates hands-on technology education and place-based learning to improve student understanding of key chemistry concepts as they relate to local environmental science. The module also supports disciplinary core ideas, practices, and cross-cutting concepts in accordance with the Next Generation Science Standards. We field-tested our module in three different high school courses: Chemistry, Oceanography and Advanced Placement Environmental Science at schools in Washington, USA. Students built spectrophotometric pH sensors using readily available electronic components and calibrated them with known pH reference standards. Students then used their sensors to measure the pH of local environmental water samples. Assessments showed significant improvement in content knowledge in all three courses relating to environmental relevance of pH, and to the design, use and environmental application of sensors. Students also reported increased self-confidence in the material, even when their content knowledge remained the same. These findings suggest that classroom sensor building and collection of environmental data increases student understanding and self-confidence by connecting chemistry concepts to local environmental settings.more » « less
-
The Arctic environment is experiencing profound and rapid changes that will have far-reaching implications for resilient and sustainable development at the local and global levels. To achieve sustainable Arctic futures, it is critical to equip policymakers and global and regional stake- and rights-holders with knowledge and data regarding the ongoing changes in the Arctic environment. Community monitoring is an important source of environmental data in the Arctic but this research argues that community-generated data are under-utilized in the literature. A key challenge to leveraging community-based Arctic environmental monitoring is that it often takes the form of large, unstructured data consisting of field documents, media reports, and transcripts of oral histories. In this study, we integrated two computational approaches—topic modeling and network analysis—to identify environmental changes and their implications for resilience and sustainability in the Arctic. Using data from community monitoring reports of unusual environmental events in the Arctic that span a decade, we identified clusters of environmental challenges: permafrost thawing, infrastructure degradation, animal populations, and fluctuations in energy supply, among others. Leveraging visualization and analytical techniques from network science, we further identified the evolution of environmental challenges over time and contributing factors to the interconnections between these challenges. The study concludes by discussing practical and methodological contributions to Arctic resiliency and sustainability.more » « less
-
Indigenous Peoples across the Arctic have adapted to environmental change since time immemorial, yet recent climate change has imposed unprecedented and abrupt changes that affect the land and sea upon which communities rely. Co-created community-based observing programs offer an opportunity to harness the holistic breadth of knowledge in communities with the goal of tracking Arctic change while simultaneously supporting community priorities and local-scale needs. The Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub (AAOKH) is a network of Iñupiaq observers from northern Alaska coastal communities working in partnership with academic researchers. Here, we describe five core functions that have emerged through AAOKH, which include tracking long-term environmental changes; communicating Indigenous-led observations of the environment and their meaning; place-based and culturally relevant education; enabling scientific and Indigenous Knowledge exchange; and supporting community-led responses to environmental change. We outline and discuss specific actions and opportunities that have been used to increase knowledge exchange of AAOKH observations, make space for the next generation of Indigenous scholars, and create locally relevant data products and syntheses that can inform resource management and community planning. We also discuss our ongoing efforts to increasingly shift toward a knowledge coproduction framework as we plan to sustain AAOKH into the future.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02310-9
