Subject: USA TODAY STORY:  AMATEUR VOLUNTEERS & FEDERAL RESEARCH


     Amateur Scientists Don't Get Credit They're Due By Alcestis "Cooky"
     Oberg

     When the floodwaters receded from his property in Seguin, Texas, last
     October, amateur scientist Forrest Mims measured the devastation for
     the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: the bark bruising on trees,
     loss of topsoil, addition of silt from neighboring properties and
     quality of water in his creek.

     He observed that most insects, birds and mammals were gone, except for
     scavenging vultures. But within two weeks, life's renewal process
     began: Green shoots popped up through the silt, and more wildlife
     returned.

     Mims is not unique. There are hundreds of thousands of volunteer
     citizen/scientists who perform the most fundamental science every day
     for various government agencies: observing, measuring and recording
     weather, climatic, soil, atmospheric, hydrological or wildlife data.
     Each data point is a tiny piece in the great puzzle of life on Earth,
     vital to our understanding of the processes that surround us and shape
     our lives.

     But few years ago, Congress tried to abolish volunteer-scientist
     programs, even though they save colossal amounts of money. And there's
     even a peculiar disconnect between White House rhetoric, which
     stridently champions both volunteerism and environmentalism, and the
     administration's lack of real-life budget support for its own
     volunteer/environmental programs. In fact, these budgets generally
     have either stayed flat or fallen behind the funding levels they had
     10 years ago under President Reagan.

     Take, for instance, the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer
     Network. Every day, 11,000 U.S. observers measure temperature and
     rainfall -- the densest, most complete environmental monitoring of its
     kind anywhere on the planet. Every week, these citizen/observers
     submit their reports on paper to the National Climate Data Center
     (NCDC) in Asheville, N.C., where the reports are checked, recorded and
     put together with other readings in a monthly climate printout. Later
     they're added to the world's most complete historical climate archive.
     "Benjamin Franklin's records are somewhere in the basement," NCDC's
     John Jensen observed.

     This climate information is vital to the whole nation. Farmers use it
     for planting and planning harvests. The insurance industry pores over
     the climate averages to calculate coverage of houses, crops and
     businesses. Lawyers discover the exact weather conditions at the time
     of some accident. The building industry judges the exact depth house
     foundations in a specific area must be, to avoid waterlogging or frost
     heave -- saving millions for builders and homeowners alike. Community
     officials get accurate rainfall/soil saturation rates to make
     evacuation plans during flooding conditions.

     "These volunteers are a huge cost savings," Jensen said. For a few
     million dollars, "the program generates several billions in payback."

     But a National Academy of Sciences study pointed out that the whole
     Cooperative Observer Network is neglected, outdated and, most of all,
     suffers from a terrible "lack of priority" within the U.S. government.
     Budgets have fallen in the past few years, and much weather equipment
     needs to be modernized. The old electronic thermometers are "obsolete
     and increasingly difficult to maintain and calibrate." The whole
     mail-based reporting system is obsolete and, with a small budget, could
     be automated. A small equipment investment would enable "real-time"
     digital communications to be set up between observers and field
     officials -- an enormous benefit for hard-pressed community leaders who
     must make decisions during weather emergencies.

     And the Weather Service volunteer programs aren't the only ones in need
     of attention. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses 29,000 volunteers
     to do 20% of all the nation's wildlife refuge work for less than $2
     million a year. A small increase in the volunteer budgets could easily
     double or triple that dedicated force.

     The U.S. Geological Survey --which uses 10,000 volunteers in its water
     monitoring, mapping, geologic processes and the North American bird
     and amphibian surveys -- could greatly extend its volunteer networks
     to include surveys of butterflies, sea and marsh birds and amphibians
     living in streams and ponds.

     "Birds and amphibians are windows into the local environment," said
     Sam Droege, chief of the USGS Monitoring Development Group. "They are
     harbingers of what we'll get." They have the volunteers, just not the
     tiny budget to organize these important networks.

     Several studies have shown that data collected by amateur scientists
     are every bit as accurate as data collected by professionals. And
     sometimes amateurs find important "professional" mistakes.

     The most spectacular case happened in 1992, when Forrest Mims found
     serious data errors in NASA's $250 million ozone-mapping satellite
     while taking ozone readings at his home. At first, NASA scientists
     politely dismissed him -- until his data were backed up by the
     National Oceanographic Agency and confirmed by the World Standard
     Ozone Monitoring Station in Hawaii. NASA recalibrated its satellite
     and used Mims in 1995 and 1997 for ultraviolet- light and ozone
     measurements in Brazil.

     A tireless advocate for amateur scientists, Mims notes that they have
     to work hard to win the respect of professional scientists. "You have
     to play by their rules of professionalism, including peer review and
     publishing," he said.

     Nonetheless, scientists with long experience dealing with volunteer
     networks have the profoundest respect for them. The Weather Service
     has trained 150,000 Skywarn spotters -- mostly ham and CB radio
     operators, police officers and emergency medical workers -- to provide
     vital on-the-ground observations during severe weather conditions.

     "Radar and satellites can't tell you everything," said Bill Alexander
     of the National Weather Service. "The human/machine mix is absolutely
     vital to the warning process."

     After a decade of volunteerism neglect, the president and Congress
     seem to be coming to their senses. In October, they enacted the
     Volunteer and Partnership Enhancement Act, which if funded, would
     encourage wider participation of volunteers, especially seniors and
     children, in the national wildlife refuge system.

     Now, if more attention and funding could be carried into all the other
     volunteer programs -- those of the Weather Service, the Geological
     Survey, the Park Service, etc. -- a talent base numbering potentially
     in the millions could be forged into a capable and formidable army of
     environmental monitors and stewards.

     And the kick is, they all will work for free -- just for the love of
     it.

     Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg is a freelance science and technology writer
     living in Houston. She is also a member of USA TODAY's board of
     contributors.

Discover Life in America | Who's Involved | Communications | Oberg - 18 February, 1999