It was exciting to open the July enewsletter of the Habitat Network, a citizen science project offered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and see the lead article about Wenatchee Naturalist, Lisa Robinson’s habitat mapping project.
Lisa Robinson (photo: Neriman Berry)
Lisa has mapped 800+ acres along the Columbia River near Wenatchee. She began by mapping her own backyard and expanded to Wenatchee Confluence State Park and Chelan PUD Hydro Park. Lisa is eager to share her skills to help others jump into this project – contact her at lahrdesign@aol.com
As described on the website, this project launched at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as YardMap in March 2012. Habitat Network is the world’s first interactive citizen scientist social network. Habitat Network is a citizen science project designed to cultivate a richer understanding of wildlife habitat, for both professional scientists and people concerned with their local environments. They collect data by asking individuals across the country to literally draw maps of their backyards, parks, farms, favorite birding locations, schools, and gardens. We connect you with your landscape details and provide tools for you to make better decisions about how to manage landscapes sustainability. The project is designed to collect data to determine the best practices for wildlife habitat development and improvement. Questions to be answered include:
- What practices improve the wildlife value of residential landscapes?
- Which of these practices have the greatest impact?
- Over how large an area do we have to implement these practices to really make a difference?
- What impact do urban and suburban wildlife corridors and stopover habitats have on birds?
- Which measures (bird counts? nesting success?) show the greatest impacts of our practices?