Citizen scientists making a difference in Tahoe
By Kathryn Reed
More data and faster results. That’s what happens when volunteers are used as citizen scientists.
The League to Save Lake Tahoe in the last few years has been embracing this approach involving projects dealing with water quality and lake clarity.
Jesse Patterson, deputy director of the League, on March 18 gave a presentation about the effectiveness of volunteer monitoring as part of Tahoe Talks Spring Brown Bag Lunch Series at Lake Tahoe Community College.
If people don’t know what an agency is doing, then it is hard to recruit more volunteers. And if people don’t know about a problem, they can’t volunteer to help fix it.
Patterson illustrated this point by explaining how beaches in the Lake Tahoe Basin are often littered with trash after July 4. But until the League used numbers to fully illustrate the extent of the problem, people were ho-hum about the issue, and solutions were not sought.
In 2014, from 5 percent of the shoreline, the following were collected July 5:
• 2,260 pounds of trash
• 3,000 cigarette butts
• 1,200 cans
• 800 bottles.
“We identified a significant issue. We need cigarette disposal canisters,” Patterson said. “We hope to get the message out before July 4 so we have a different outcome this year.”
While citizen science or volunteer monitoring has been around for more than a century, it hasn’t always been widely used in the basin. The League only three years ago started the Tahoe Pipe Keepers and two years ago began Eyes on the Lake. Patterson said citizen scientists are important for “gathering quality data to answer questions to make a change as a community.”
It all starts with observing a problem or situation and then asking questions. This evolves into doing research, then setting goals and objectives – figuring out potential outcomes, getting buy-in from others, setting up quality assurances, getting volunteers, sharing results, constantly tweaking things to stay relevant and engaged, and then taking action to solve the original problem. This is the process the League went through in establishing its programs.
With 45 pipe keepers trained, 20 of the more than 100 pipes in the basin being monitored, 1,191 samples collected and analyzed, and more than 1,000 photos-videos taken, Patterson calls the program a success.
On top of that the Desert Research Institute and Tahoe Resource Conservation District have come on as partners. The agencies have looked at the League’s data, compared it to its own and see relevance in what the League is doing – so much so that the League is sharing its findings for the real scientists to incorporate the data into their work.
Patterson said the key to maintaining success and interest for the volunteers is to provide different levels of participation. In the Pipe Keepers case this meant not having everyone have to go out to a drain in the middle of the night in the middle of a downpour. It also means providing tools so volunteers don’t have out-of-pocket expenses, making reporting easy – aka, available online, and always feeding the workers.
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Notes:
Future brown bag lunches at Lake Tahoe Community College’s board room:
• April 15, noon-1:30pm – Dealing with Drought: Stewardship Practices at Sierra-at-Tahoe
• May 20, noon-1:30pm – The Bike’s Impact on Tahoe’s Economy
• June 17, noon-1:30pm – Legal Rights and Issues for Pedestrians and Bicyclists
• June 24, noon-1:30pm – Law Enforcement Strategies to Improve Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety.
Citizen scientists, what a great idea.
BTW, I am a master chef as I just boiled an egg.
I am applying at Edgewood today for the position of chief chef. With my resume and white apron and chef’s hat I should be cinch to get the job.
I guess it would beat working as a dog-lawyer.
Lake Tahoe News comments page: an endless source of “citizen scientists.”
I was going to call it a “bottomless” source but I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate.
Thank you for your clean-up and monitoring efforts. It is good to see a less confrontational attitude that actually contributes to making Lake Tahoe clean.
I hear that STuPiD has an opening for fully licensed canine barrister-you’re fully qualified
I believe the pipe keepers were formed well before the league took over those efforts. The league did not create the pipe keepers.
Slapshot, you may be thinking of the Pipe Club which was created by concerned citizens several years before Pipe Keepers, which was created by the League in 2012. Pipe Club was an informative program which was successful in bringing public awareness to the issues surrounding stormwater in Tahoe. It was one of the inspirations for creating Pipe Keepers which is a program that strives for more than program awareness.
The Pipe Club was a psuedoscience disinformation campaign with an anti-regulation, anti-restoration agenda.
“citizen scientists” They must be highly qualified LOL. Much better than REAL science, no doubt. It is the citizens job to preserve the environment, but do we really want to put ordinary citizens in decision-making positions? Citizens reporting issues, cleaning up, and trying to preserve the environment are good, but letting them do the science? I’m not saying that these scientists are perfect, but I think they are more trustworthy than regular people. Legal’s analogy was very appropriate.
No Greengrass, you and Legal Beagle are WAY off base. What this is about is having more people collect BASIC data therefore allowing the actual scientists to correlate that data, and by having more data they can have a more comprehensive study. But both of you with your snarky comments are just too blind to see the benefits!
Okey dokey.
I welcome the new face of the league. As you can imagine I don’t always agree with them and I hope this new face is not just a PR stunt.
I have enjoyed their open houses in the summer and love the thought of people cleaning beaches and streams. Much better than filing harassment lawsuits against everything.
Beagle (and Green) simply do not like the term “Science.” Albert Einstein was a Citizen Scientist too while working for the Swiss Patent Office in the early 1900’s.
You could probably call Isaac Newton a Citizen Scientist or Citizen Mathematician too, since his Mother wanted him to be a Farmer.
Prunes… Pipe club though incredibly controversial disseminated real science with publications to back it up. And was a catalyst for pipe keepers. How come pipe club ended and pipe keepers was formed almost immediately. Coincidence? I communicated with that group quite a bit and was immensely impressed with their knowledge just not their tact.