The nation’s largest assessment of mercury contamination started as a project between scientists, teachers, and students at Acadia National Park. How has the help of more than 6,000 citizen scientists improved our understanding of mercury pollution across the US?

Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park: www. schoodicinstitute.org

The Dragonfly Mercury Project: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/citizenscience/dragonfly-mercury-project.htm

Schoodic Notes: https://schoodicnotes.blog/

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TRANSCRIPT:

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[Soundscape from Bass Harbor Head Light including buoy bells, waves lapping, and birdsong]

Olivia: Sea to Trees is brought to you by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. I’m Olivia Milloway.

Olivia: What do a wild seaweed harvester, a middle-schooler with a love for centipedes, and a nature writer have in common? All three carry the honorary title of citizen scientist.

Margie: I'm Margie Patlak, and what else you do you need me to say? [Laughs] The weather here is perfect, and it's always a beautiful day in Maine.

Olivia: That was Margie, the nature writer. She spent the majority of her career writing about biomedical research, but has lately turned her attention toward the natural world, more specifically, the insects around her home in Corea, Maine. Margie is a citizen scientist because she helps record information that can be used to reach a greater understanding of a scientific question. The tool she uses is iNaturalist, a user-sourced global database of biodiversity, to identify insects she finds in her yard and wants to write about. In turn, the photographs she uploads are available for researchers to analyze, tracking where certain species show up across the globe.

Margie: It's like a win-win situation, because I’m going out and taking pictures and submitting it to iNaturalist so I get to know what it is and do my own research, but the scientists get to know that that insect is around and it helps them with their research.

Olivia: Margie first learned about iNaturalist at a Schoodic Institute citizen science training a few years ago.

Margie: I’m not the most digitally savvy person, but because I was able to get such good instruction in the workshop and we were able to practice it, I got it under my belt, and, you know, it’s with me all the time. I mean, I’m always trying to document and figure out what it is I’m seeing out in nature.

Olivia: You’re listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast that tells the stories of the science happening in and around Acadia from the rocky shoreline to the evergreen forests to the granite mountaintops. In this first season of the show, we’re exploring the ever-growing field of citizen science and how it can help answer questions about our changing world. In this first episode, we’ll learn more about the practice of citizen science here in Acadia National Park.

Abe: Citizen science is science that involves the public at some stage of the process, and that could be any part of the scientific process from the asking of questions to the collecting of data, to the analyzing or interpreting the data.

Olivia: That was Abe Miller-Rushing, the science coordinator for Acadia National Park. We met on Thompson Island, which, on that day, was especially buggy. Abe says that volunteers play an important role in the park's understanding of natural and cultural resources.

Abe: Citizen science is in fact the main way we know about birds in Acadia National Park, and in fact most national parks is my guess, that even our inventory and monitoring of birds in Acadia is done through citizen science–so volunteers going out and monitoring birds during the breeding season.

Olivia: Abe used the phrase inventory and monitoring, with inventory meaning the process of documenting the range of natural resources in Acadia, and monitoring to denote paying attention to how these resources are changing through time. Inventory and monitoring is a part of the National Park Service's responsibility, and it’s not just birds that citizen scientists are helping to document.

Abe: And it turns out that most of what we know about how the environment, how plants and animals are responding to climate change is from citizen science in the first place. A lot of what we understand about how the timing of the seasons is changing is from citizen science, people just noting when birds were arriving or when plants were flowering in their gardens, or in the woods on walks. And so citizen science has told us a lot about how the environment is changing, and we need to continue that going forward.

Olivia: In his doctoral research, Abe used the journals of Henry David Thoreau to show how the climate around Walden Pond had changed over the last century and a half. But besides their contributions to understanding how the biological timing of seasons is changing–what scientists like Abe call phenology–similar historical journals dating back to the 1800s have helped Schoodic Institute researchers understand how species are changing in Acadia. More on that in episode two. Personal records have also been crucial to documenting sea level rise in Acadia, including where Abe and I met for this interview.

Abe: So, right now we are on Thompson Island, which is near the head of Mount Desert Island where most of Acadia National Park is, and Thompson is a part of Acadia. This has actually been a really important place for citizen science and to document the impacts of climate change to the park. We had one volunteer in the park who, on his own, was documenting how Thompson Island has been eroding and how most of the firepits and picnic areas that were originally planned in this picnic area part of the park have eroded and are now in Frenchman Bay rather than on the island.

Olivia: This volunteer citizen scientist, Steve Perrin, contributed to many projects in Acadia, including a watershed map. For over a decade, he tracked erosion and sea level rise at Thompson Island, comparing the current state of the shoreline to historical photographs.

Abe: This erosion is continuing as a result of climate change, and really will likely continue going forward and is one of the visible ways that climate change is affecting the park and the places that people enjoy.

Olivia: The coastal areas around Acadia are also home to clams, worms, and other marine resources that sustain the livelihoods of commercial harvesters.

Abe: We’re surrounded by mudflats that are currently underwater but at low tide they’re exposed and this becomes a really important place for clamming and marine worm harvesting. Right now we have a lot of seagulls hanging out in the grass and the picnic area around us.

Olivia: Clam and marine worm harvesters, too, are contributing their knowledge to collaborative efforts to protect and restore intertidal areas in the park.

Olivia: Citizen scientists can help contribute to research in many ways, whether it’s through developing questions, collecting data, or analyzing that data. In the examples Abe brought up–monitoring breeding birds, blooming wildflowers, and sea level rise–contributions of citizen scientists have helped park staff cue into larger trends, providing the opportunity for them to consider specific follow-up studies or management strategies. Hannah Webber, Schoodic Institute’s Marine Ecology Director, has leveraged the help of citizen scientists in this way to study the reproductive cycle of sea stars.

Hannah: So in 2020, a friend of mine reached out and said, “Hey I'm seeing all these sea stars, it seems like we’re having a boom this year.” And I said, “Hey, wow, maybe we’re seeing a boom here too,” and we said, “Let’s create a citizen science call to action.”

Olivia: This friend was Heather Richard, who is now a graduate student at the University of Maine.

Hannah: I think we called it “Call to Five Arms,” it was quick, it was less than a month in 2020, we said just go out in this time period, let us know where you’re seeing sea stars and how many, and people just sent us pictures. It was awesome. I just got off the phone with someone who was like, “I’m picking up this study of the boom bust cycle of sea stars up and down the coast of Maine because of your project, because you generated all this knowledge about, about this particular sea star boom.” And that is not myself or my co-creator of that project, that’s somebody else who just has gotten some funding and is picking up and running with it. They wouldn’t have been able to do that without citizen science.

Olivia: One note on terminology–the term “citizen science” doesn’t mean that you need to have any particular citizenship status to participate; it’s meant to be inclusive rather than limiting.

Abe: We definitely don’t want the terminology to get in the way of who gets included. You can be any age to do citizen science, I’ve done citizen science where kindergarteners use popsicle sticks to label dandelions in their schoolyard and monitor those.

Olivia: Actually, students and retirees are the folks who most often participate in citizen science projects here in Acadia National Park. In addition to producing useful data about the park, citizen science is a powerful opportunity for engaging the public with the scientific process.

Abe: It’s not some big mysterious thing that only super duper experts can do, it’s something that all of us can participate in. It’s asking and answering questions.

Olivia: Supporting science, and making that science accessible to park visitors is a large part of Schoodic Institute’s work as one of seventeen Research Learning Centers in national parks across the country.

Abe: Schoodic Institute supports all of the science that happens at Acadia, citizen science or otherwise. A big function that Schoodic Institute plays here in Acadia and throughout the Nation