Title: Large-scale ecological questions, citizen science, and photography

Presenter: John Pickering, Discover Life & University of Georgia

Abstract:

Let's enable teachers and their students to run a network of ecological
research sites around the world, engage them and their communities in
science, and generate the knowledge that society needs to understand
and address pressing environmental issues.

Discover Life (www.discoverlife.org) provides online tools and research
protocols for scientists and the public to collect and analyze high-quality
data on species and their interactions.  These tools include photographic
albums, identification guides, a global mapper, and automated analysis
software.  The talk will focus on Discover Life's Mothing project
(www.discoverlife.org/moth), the primary goal of which is to document
how weather, latitude and land use affect the diversity, phenology and
abundance of moths.  Since 2010, participants have submitted over 100,000
photographs of moths and other creatures attracted to lights at sites in
the United States and Costa Rica.  He will describe how species are
identified and data are processed nightly. Examples will show seasonal
differences across years and changes in the number of generations
with latitude.

Brief biography:

John Pickering was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois,
received his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University, and was a
post-doc at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1984, he
has been on the faculty at the University of Georgia, Athens.  In
addition to a lifetime studying natural history, he has programmed
computers since 1972.  He founded Discover Life in 1998. His dream
is to monitor sites around the world and use natural experiments
to understand and manage the impacts of climate change, land use,
pollution, and invasive species on biological systems.