Dark Citizen Science: Reviving Old, Lost, and Overlooked Citizen Science Records

Attics, libraries, museums, historical societies, and many other places are full of records of past amateur naturalists, hunters, fishermen, gardeners, and others who made valuable observations of species occurrences and... [ view full abstract ]

Attics, libraries, museums, historical societies, and many other places are full of records of past amateur naturalists, hunters, fishermen, gardeners, and others who made valuable observations of species occurrences and behaviors, drew maps, collected specimens, and recorded weather and other phenomena. These records are invaluable to current studies of climate change and other rapid environmental changes. They can provide insights into how species, landscapes, and environmental conditions have changed over the past century or more. Too often, however, these records are left unread and unused in favor of doing new research.

In this poster, we describe our work using “dark citizen science” in Acadia National Park in Maine. Acadia’s museum collection contains over one million items, including plant and animal specimens, photographs, reports, field notebooks, maps, and other documents and objects. Moreover, the libraries, historical societies, and colleges in the surrounding communities contain millions more. We have begun an ambitious project to digitize these specimens and records and make them freely available in an online database. At the same time, we are engaging volunteers to help pull key data--starting with species occurrences, abundance, and phenology--out from these records and transcribe them into databases. And we are encouraging and facilitating research that uses these records to understand changes in the park’s ecosystems. One of the first of these projects has shown that the park has lost nearly 20% of its flora over the past 100 years. We are working with researchers to use these historical records and new field observations to understand why these losses occurred and to identify species that are likely vulnerable to future environmental changes. These dark citizen science records provide critical data to protect our environment and also provide compelling personal stories that can engage the public in science and conservation.