Tag Archive | CoCoRaHS

Citizen Science

Apr8
My little dingo works on a chew-bone

I just learned about another doggie DNA lab. This one is a non-profit research organization called Darwin’s Ark. You can pay for a DNA test kit, or you can get on the waitlist to get a free one if you answer 10 short questionnaires about your dog. There are 26 questionnaires, each with around 10 questions. I answered all of them, but I doubt that will bump me up in the list. They rely on grants and donations, and only run the DNA tests when they get enough money and a certain number of entrants. So it could be years before I get to do this test for Wren, but I’m interested to see if it provides more information about her breed mix than the first one. They use substantially more genetic markers than Embark, which uses the most of any commercial lab. Even if you don’t want to get the DNA test, the questionnaires still provide valuable data as they work on issues like dog cancer, and ticks.

This is just one of the many citizen science projects that technology and the world wide web make available to anyone to participate in. I’m grateful for these opportunities to provide our everyday observations to teams that can learn and discover. Some others are: I See Change, which was born in the North Fork Valley and now has participants around the world measuring and sharing climate change in their backyards; eBird from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology gathering bird sightings from around the world to advance research and conservation; and CoCoRahs, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, which started 25 years ago on Colorado’s Front Range and now has participants throughout North America and beyond. Technically I’m a member of all these, though I’ve let my participation in a couple of them slide in recent years. National Geographic also has a list of fine citizen science opportunities.

Snow

Dec29
Snow started falling heavily late yesterday and continued into the night. iPhone night vision is amazing!

Gratitude practice today begins with SNOW, for obvious reasons. Western Colorado is among the regions hardest hit by climate chaos in the Lower 48. We are in Exceptional Drought, the driest, most dangerous category, expected to suffer both short (agriculture) and longterm (hydrology, ecology) drought. The state has activated its municipal drought response for second time ever. Any moisture is good moisture, and snow is the best. Our fundamental water reservoirs are snow-capped mountains.

Grateful Stellar can still wobble through snow this deep, and it’s good PT for his hind legs, too. Grateful I can still wobble through snow this deep!

I’m celebrating the biggest snow of the year, a really big snow! Compared, anyway, to past years. This morning’s accumulation measured only 5.2 inches, with .38 inch moisture content. I’m grateful for CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network, a citizen-science initiative that began with a few weather geeks at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University in 1998. Now thousands of regular folks (also, I guess, we are all weather geeks) report daily precipitation from our own backyard weather stations across the Northern Hemisphere.

And I’m grateful for Julia Kamari-Drapkin, who started a now-global interactive climate change platform called I See Change in the North Fork Valley in 2015, in collaboration with KVNF and NASA. As part of her yearlong residence here, exploring climate change through the eyes of local ranchers, farmers, beekeepers, and weather geeks, Julia invited Nolan Doeskin, then Colorado State Climatologist, to do a little workshop at the radio station, where I got turned onto CoCoRaHS and started daily precipitation measurements with an inexpensive rain gauge and special snow ruler. I’m grateful to weather geeks the world over for their citizen science, and for that matter to birders, too, who are in the midst of the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, for their contributions to global climate research.

You can get a sense of how snow shapes trees through the many winters of their growth…
Grateful for Neighbor Ken who plowed our driveways this morning, and for other neighbors who do the same.
Grateful for sunshine after snow, too.

So much to be grateful for today! Among other things like chocolate, soap, a functional woodstove, and the propane truck that got stuck for awhile in plow drifts at the bottom of the driveway, I’m grateful to Deb for calling me on my dark side in a conversation yesterday, which allowed me to see something clearly and ultimately laugh at my silliness, before I did any harm. Grateful for daily mindfulness practice, which enables me to live each day in better alignment with my core values.