Reporting Group

• Evaluate data acquisition and observer support features of the prototype NPN web page

• Suggest modifications and enhancements, including data visualization functions

Recommendation #1

• Find someone’s website to steal

Models to Draw on or Emulate

• GLOBE• UK Network (web presence & feedback is a great

target to aim for)• FrogWatch• Monarch Watch• JourneyNorth• American Bird Conservancy (Jeff Price)• Hummingbird.net• Report through NBII

Recommedation #2

• Focus on QAQC

Recommendation #3

• Develop an access policy

• Use of a tiered access policy

• Try to extract some information from the reporters, but not intrusively

Recommendation #4

• Allow for the submission on non-electronic data

• Phenology clearing house

Recommendation #5

• Provide support

• Hard copy and electronic

• Ask the expert features

Recommendation #6

• Provide a fully relational database for scientific users

Recommendation #7

• Access existing membership lists

• Sierra Club, Audubon, senior groups, etc.

Citizen Scientist Issues• Uploading digital photos• QA/QC-ing citizen science contributions, need to look at

spatial coherence of new data with existing data(GLOBE programmatic decision to leave questionable/bad data in rather than discourage contributors)

• Establish some baseline level of metadata to at least request • Species names and other technical terms should be on drop-

down menus whereever possible• Quality narrative input option (I was gone and now the thing

has bloomed sometime in the past 2 days!)

Citizen Scientists Program• Capacity for observer to pose questions (“Ask the Expert”

options)Funding/programmatic requirements

• Instantaneous graphing/feedback capacity is major plus!• Dutch: Mailed brochures as central line of communcation;

backup expertise online• European contribs ~ 60% online 40% paper• In US, are the numbers (of possible contribs) and areas too

large to make the expert support tenable, to make paper-based communications feasible?

• -- Significant staffing!

Random

• Feedback with, say, NDVI as well as NPN data

• Ability to compare to last year, etc

Feedback/ingestion/QA-QC

• Feedback to contributors• Further QA/QC and formating will be required for

scientific uses• Need for highly motivated user at the receiving

end• Targetted postdoc programs (nps, etc) to work

specifically with phenological data as it comes in?• “Data ownership”

Serving the Database• Fully addressable database:

– plotting time series at a plant– mapping reports– automatic model building (degree day models)

Should all the raw data be made available?Or should raw data be by request only (maintains knowledge

of who is using the data and why)?Gateway approach?Open access?Base system—fully open; enhanced sites—gateways

(ESA moves towards mandatory data registry & archival)Restrictions on numbers of records retrievable at a given time,

to reduce impact on IT systems

Serving the Database• Samples of long-term datasets?• How to know who is using the data (to

report to funding sources etc)?– Login memberships?– Pull down of uses– Students/research/whatever pulldown– Zip codes– Payback (biblio/weblinks/others doing the

same)– Lat/long, with feedbacks from dem derivatives– Map feedback re: the address they gave

Geopositioning

• Location, closest town, lat long

• Contact FrogWatch to find out how big a deal privacy about locations has been

• NDVI map feedback? and correction

• DOQ/DEM feedback? and correction

Communications• “Estimated” box option• Trying lots of things and see what works:

– Paper to the volunteers/etc (primary conduit): brochures, calendars, instruction, cheatsheets

– But all of the paper also appears online– Paper back: paper contributions possible– Online responses: Contributing data online encouraged

• GLOBE has loads of dropouts because of lack of scientist face time with participants (need that facetime)

• Annual communications from the program/scientists (at regional scale)

Regions• Bioregional structures managing recruitment, communicating,

qa-qc, data ingestion and reporting• Fixed stations national; citizen scientists regional• “Ask the expert” needs to be regional• The institutional face of NPN should be regional• Competition by regions for most recruitments ($1M!!! At $10

per recruitment)• Pheno-pools (who comes closest to predicting the pheno-stage)• Minnesota calendar example as advertising/reporting tool• Managing the media: identifying “good” stories

For the Science Community• Feedbacks to contributor as data problems

arise• Reasonable-ranges QA, generates

immediate query back on input (or attempts at input)

• NPN site needs a Research directory (links to as many sites that are using NPN data as we can accumulate)

Recruitment• Buying mailing lists?• Nature groups (Sierra Club, Audobon, Scouts,…)• AP classes• Retirement communities• School districts• Church groups (jack in pulpit, tree of heaven, …)• Kids lists (marshmallow, pussy willows,…)

• “Staff” presentations to all sorts of groups

Publications• What comes from that first 5000 observations

that come to a regional coordinator?– Elevation-temperature “predictive” model for 10

species/synchroneity of flowering among locations and species

– Comparison with greenup data

What comes after 3 years?

Wet year-dry year/cool year-warm year comparison