Nahje McDowell, Tahsin Mahin, Tisha Mahabuba
Our project delves into the world of citizen science and its pivotal role in assessing biodiversity. Our study primarily focuses on the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which has confronted a succession of environmental challenges over the years ranging from pollution from the city, nitrogen contamination, as well as the loss of salt marshes and wetlands in the broader ecosystem. We zoned in on the impact of native and salt-tolerant plant restoration efforts that took place from 2015-2017. Our measure of assessing restoration was abundance of semipalmated sandpipers, a long distance migratory shorebird that finds refuge in the marshes of Jamaica Bay. We used citizen science data from iNaturalist to track the history of observations in a 6 year range before and after the restoration period.
Our results not only showed a clear increase in observations of sandpipers after restoration efforts, but it also highlighted the extent to which data taken from citizen science repositories, despite its potential pitfalls, are carefully vetted. With this in mind, it’s vital to keep community involvement alive in the face of environmental challenges.
Jennifer
December 14, 2023 — 4:29 pm
I think your idea of analyzing whether or not citizen science can be a meaningful way of evaluating restoration efforts is a very interesting idea. In your conclusion, your group pointed out that other factors like population changes and migration patterns could’ve also been the reason why there was an uptick in observations. I think you guys could’ve also tested your hypothesis on a separate, non-bird related, restoration effort to see if you would’ve gotten similar results to gauge whether or not those factors really had that big of an influence on your results.