Center for Community & Citizen Science Blog

Blog entry Ryan Meyer

New reports on Community and Citizen Science in California’s Marine Protected Areas

The Center’s analyses will inform the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Decadal Management Review of MPAs

CCS in MPAs Report

Since Spring 2021, two project teams at the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science have been collecting and analyzing data related to the contributions of community and citizen science participants in coastal monitoring activities within and surrounding marine protected areas (MPAs) throughout the State of California.

Blog entry Peggy Harte

Engaging College Opportunity Programs, Researchers and Students through Citizen Science: Reimagining Possibilities of STEM and CTE

In January of 2020, the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS) began a new research practice partnership exploring STEM opportunities and developing teacher professional development with the college opportunity program GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), serving students across Glenn, Colusa, and Tehama counties.

Blog entry Chris Jadallah

Chris In The Creek: Community-Based Monitoring with the Watershed Education Network

Originally posted in the Watershed Education Network

The original blog post is available here.

Western Montana’s Rattlesnake Creek and its many relations – human and more-than-human – are at the heart of our ongoing research-practice partnership between Watershed Education Network (WEN) and the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science. As part of this partnership, I was fortunate enough to visit Missoula this past summer to collect data that will help us document how WEN’s Stream Team and Backcountry Stream Corps programs are fostering community impacts in the Rattlesnake Creek watershed and beyond.

Blog entry

An Overview of the City Nature Challenge

Alexandria Tillett Miller

What is the City Nature Challenge?

The City Nature Challenge is a collaborative international bioblitz that started in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The objective for the challenge is to motivate people in their surrounding area to get outside and document wildlife and general biodiversity. In 2017, the City Nature Challenge went national, and one year later, became a world-wide event.

Blog entry

Invasive Tamarisk Removal: A youth-led project

Mireya Bejarano

This post was authored by Mireya Bejarano, an undergraduate student studying Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology at the University of California, Davis. She has been working with the Center for Community and Citizen Science as a research assistant since 2020. She is interested in the positive impacts that citizen science and conservation can have on each other when combined. She plans to pursue a career in conservation post graduation. Her favorite bird native to California is the Loggerhead Shrike.

Blog entry

Resources on CCS in Farms and Gardens

Student and Teacher gardening

We’re proud to announce a new special issue of California Agriculture exploring the many ways that community and citizen science (CCS) are playing a role in cooperative extension. Ryan Meyer, Sabrina Drill, and Chris Jadallah served as guest editors of this collection, which spans a wide range of topics while illustrating the many different ways that CCS is used by extension professionals to advance their work.

Blog entry Peggy Harte

Professional Learning Opportunity: Get Back Time By Forefronting Science

April 20, 2021

This workshop highlighted ways in which elementary teachers can plan for science even with limited time for student contact by forefronting science within integrated lessons. We explored the Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs) and look at ways the EP&Cs have been integrated into other content area frameworks. Participants left with a co-designed grade level resource to allow for integrated unit planning that places science at the core.

Blog entry

How to teach an experiential field course online

This post was developed by Laci Gerhart-Barley, Christopher Jadallah, Sarah Angulo, and Greg Ira, who have recently published a paper about their work adapting an experiential field course (with significant citizen science components) to an online setting during Covid-19. You can access the paper, published in Ecology and Evolution, here

Blog entry Peggy Harte Written by Peggy Harte, MEd

Using Environmental Literacy as the Through Line, All Standards All Students: A Focus on Equity and Access

Environmental Literacy, Environmental Principles & Concepts, Next Generation Science Standards, Incremental Infusion

Student participating in classroom activity

Using Environmental Literacy as the Through Line, All Standards All Students: A Focus on Equity and Access

BY MARGARET (PEGGY) HARTE, MED|NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Environmental Literacy, Environmental Principles & Concepts, Next Generation Science Standards, Incremental Infusion

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Resources for Citizen Science Project Planning

Manual Full

We are excited to share three resources use in developing or evolving citizen science projects. While their focus is on dam removal and watershed restoration, much of this material could be useful for a wide range of contexts and problem areas related to conservation and natural resource management.

Blog entry

Photo Essay: Community-Based Monitoring and the Matilija Dam

Matilija Dam Removing the Matilija Dam will be no easy feat. Standing at a height of roughly 168-feet, or about 15 stories tall, this 73-year-old concrete structure blocks the flow of Matilija Creek, a major tributary of the Ventura River in Southern California.

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Our Specific Commitments to Anti-Racism

July, 2020

Last month (June, 2020), the Center for Community and Citizen Science issued a statement committing to take action against racism in the work that we do. As promised in that statement, we have been working on more specific commitments, listed below, which will guide us in the months and years ahead. We intend for this touchstone document to evolve as we learn and grow, and hope that it may be useful to our community of collaborators and beyond.

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