Fossil Atmospheres: A case study of citizen science in question-driven paleontological research
Abstract
Paleontology increasingly uses large datasets collected from museum specimens, to addresses broad scale questions about evolution and ecology on geological timescales. One such question is whether information from fossil organisms can be used as a robust proxy for atmospheric carbon dioxide through time. Here we present the citizen science branch of 'Fossil Atmospheres', a project designed to refine stomatal index of Ginkgo leaves as a paleo CO2 proxy. The scope of the project was made feasible by involving citizen scientists in data collection through the online platform 'Zooniverse'. A major challenge in the research project was a bottleneck caused by counting all the cells in each Ginkgo sample. This has been overcome with citizen involvement; however, a new set of challenges arose as a result. A beta testing phase with Zooniverse volunteers provided an opportunity to improve instructions to ensure high fidelity data. Exploration of citizen scientists' estimates show that volunteer counts of stomata are accurate with respect to counts made by the project's lead scientist. However, counts of epidermal cells have a wide range, and mean values tend to underestimate expert counts. We demonstrate a variety of approaches to reducing the inaccuracy this causes in the calculated stomatal index. Zooniverse serves as an ideal tool for collection of paleontological data from collections where distribution of fossils would be impossible but images of many specimens can be made. Such an approach facilitates the collection of a large paleontological dataset, as well as providing an opportunity for volunteers to interact with museum collections and engage with climate research.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED23E0958S
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment;
- EDUCATION