iSeeChange is a participatory environmental reporting project led by Julia Kumari Drapkin at KVNF. It generates story topics from users' weather observations, and then taps scientists to explain the whys and hows. This bottom-up crowd-sourcing has foreshadowed some of the nation's biggest recent weather stories—weeks and sometimes even months in advance. Stories sourced from the KVNF community have been reported throughout 2012.
The next step in the project is an online tool for streamlining the citizen reporting on the environment, a website called www.thealmanac.org, which will launch to the public at large in the middle of January 2013. Like a farmer’s almanac, the website will be a place for people to keep an account of an entire year, recording data from rain gauges, the date when the hyacinths appear, wildlife sightings, strategies for warding off environmental pests, the quality of the year’s harvest, and so on.
So, calling all you farmers, ranchers, environmentally aware citizens and interested journal keepers! We'll let you know when the site is ready for you. Let's contribute to the scientific record!
Until then, visit the iSeeChange Facebook page and make your comments there!
For more about iSeeChange and www.thealmanac.org: