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Citizen Science and Volunteering
Citizen science projects invite community members to take an active role in scientific discovery — collecting data, observing nature, and helping answer real-world questions. By joining in, residents don’t just contribute to research; they help build stronger connections between science, the environment, and local decision-making.
For municipalities and universities, these projects offer powerful tools for understanding local conditions — from tracking pollinators and monitoring water quality to mapping urban heat or documenting invasive species. Community-collected data helps fill gaps that professional scientists or city staff alone couldn’t cover, offering broader, more detailed insights to guide policy and sustainability work.
For participants, it’s a chance to see science in action and make a measurable difference right where they live. Whether it’s snapping photos of wildlife, taking water samples, or recording seasonal changes, citizen scientists play a key role in shaping healthier, more informed communities.
Learn about citizen science and other volunteer opportunities you can take part in below.
Every year in February, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society organize the Great Backyard Bird Count, one of the nation’s largest citizen-science events in which bird-lovers around the nation and world report bird sightings to help provide information on species distribution and abundance.
Since 2013, the GBBC has utilized the web interface on gbbc.birdcount.org, where you can create an account and log your own bird sightings in mid-February (check for specific dates each year as February approaches), helping to generate a more robust Dane County dataset for researchers. Spend as little as 10-15 minutes or as long as several hours watching for birds, logging your sightings online, taking pictures to submit for GBBC’s photo contest, identifying new species, and learning more about the wildlife around you.
Especially as many species are shifting their ranges in response to a changing climate, this data collection is important for helping scientists understand current population dynamics, so go out there and be a part of this massive citizen science effort!
Go to https://www.birdcount.org/ to learn more and sign up to participate!
The WiBee (pronounced WE-BEE) app was designed by the Gratton Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a way for citizen scientists to help researchers understand pollinator abundance and spread around Wisconsin. With just the app on your phone and as little as 5 minutes a day observing a small plot of flowers, you can help researchers by documenting pollinator categories (e.g. "bumblebee," "small dark bee," "non-bee") you observe.
As a bonus for you, every time you record your observations in your WiBee app, it means you're slowing down and taking a few minutes to relax around flowers and pollinators!
Learn more and find links to download the app at https://pollinators.wisc.edu/wibee/
Beyond WiBee, numerous other apps exist to help users participate in regional, national, or even global citizen science efforts. Some of these apps operate more as "augmented reality" tools, helping you to make better sense of the world around you; some are direct citizen science efforts that allow you to contribute to ongoing research projects; and several straddle the line between those two, serving as somewhat of a crowd-sourced information repository which you can both contribute to and benefit from.
- iNaturalist/PlantNet - These apps, and others like them, all function largely the same way, allowing you to take and upload photos of animals and plants you see, and using various analysis tools to suggest what you've observed. Many of these apps also allow you to contribute to the global database with your own photos, helping those who follow you identify their own observations.
- Project Noah - A photography project with the ultimate goal of collecting photos of every species in the world.
- LeafSnap - another identification app, LeafSnap also serves as a field guide for tree species
- BudBurst - This app, from the Chicago Botanic Garden, tracks climate change impacts by asking users to upload information on the timing of flower budding in their vicinity, as well as plant-animal interactions.
More than 50 Fitchburg residents and businesses have committed to regularly clearing Fitchburg storm drains of leaves, grass, trash, snow and other debris through the Dane County Adopt-A-Storm Drain Program. This simple act can help prevent localized flooding and keep our lakes, rivers and streams clean.
Click on the "Adopt A Storm Drain" link on the sidebar at left, or read more about the program and sign up on the Ripple Effects website.
Dane County Parks offers numerous opportunities for volunteers to help care for county-owned natural areas. These volunteer opportunities include:
- Removal of invasive trees and weeds
- Collecting, preparing, and propagating native seeds
- Assisting with prescribed burns
- Participating in workdays to restore various natural areas
- Becoming a Certified Land Steward and taking on a larger role in "adopting" and caring for natural areas
Learn more and register for some of these great opportunities at https://www.danecountyparks.com/Volunteer/Natural-Areas-Volunteer-Opportunities.
The Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (SoWBA. formerly the Madison chapter of the Audubon Society) is a multiple-county effort to improve the health and richness of our natural environment primarily through preservation and education efforts surrounding our native bird species. The SoWBA offers opportunities to volunteer with various events, as well as some citizen science projects you can take part in. Too many to list here, those projects include species counts throughout the year, nest and nestbox monitoring. Their website links to various other citizen science opportunities involving not just bird communities, but butterfly and amphibian projects as well.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum is a great place to get outside and connect with nature; staff and volunteers also routinely partner with local organizations to host citizen science events, including monarch larva monitoring, dragonfly counts, stream health checks, and phenological studies (related to seasonal change and related natural occurrences).
Look for information on these and other events at https://arboretum.wisc.edu/get-involved/citizen-science/citizen-science-trainings/
Volunteers are an integral part of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approach to monitoring hundreds of species and habitats in forests, grasslands, wetlands, lakes, rivers and streams throughout the state. This public involvement, called citizen-based monitoring, leads to high-quality scientific data, offers rewarding and educational outdoor opportunities for volunteers and promotes information sharing and collaborations between members of the public and the DNR. Working together, we can better inform natural resource management and conservation.
Citizen-based monitoring projects are active in every county in the state, with volunteer opportunities available for everyone, regardless of initial skill level, science or nature experience or time availability. No matter who you are or where you are in Wisconsin, you can contribute to the management of our precious aquatic and terrestrial natural resources.
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/citizenMonitoring