This Saturday is Citizen Science Day, though like Earth Day, it seems like every day should really be Citizen Science Day! There are so many ways for anyone to get involved with science that range from very involved to pretty lazy!

If you are big on Citizen Science, leave your best advice or favorite projects in the comments and I'll use them to expand this post.

Here are some of my favorites:

Bird Counts and Wildlife Surveys - If you love birding or looking for wildlife while walking around town or going on hikes, why not report them and help scientists?

Audubon hosts one of the oldest citizen science projects of all time, the Christmas Bird Count that has recorded bird data for 118 years!

http://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count

https://ebird.org/home

Multiple apps have gamified citizen science. QuestaGame is a great example. You earn points by submitting sightings of interesting animals and plants. It has maps, stats, challenges, you name it.

https://questagame.com/

Places like Save the Redwoods League and California Academy of Science have their own Citizen Science apps:

https://www.savetheredwoods.org/what-we-do/our-work/study/understanding-climate-change/citizen-science/redwood-watch-app-tutorial/

https://www.inaturalist.org/

Lazier options:

If you've followed me on here or on Medium, you know I'm a big promoter of volunteer computing. While some people don't consider this to really be citizen science, I tend to include anything that involves citizens that boosts science and people's interest in it. It is easy to let your computer boost research on things like cancer, astrophysics, prime numbers, aliens, and much more. You can learn more by browsing my articles on Steemit or at:

https://medium.com/adventures-in-volunteer-computing

Or you can visit World Community Grid or BOINC.

I'm involved with an exciting new project that will make it even easier for people to get involved with scientific computing projects and get rewarded for it!

Check out https://www.boid.com/

and get started at: https://app.boid.com/u/VolunteerComp

Boid is in Alpha now, but big changes are coming to the website and app soon! Stay tuned!