Climate Change and Citizen Science

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These slide sets (one for the Eastern US and one for the Western US) describe how citizen observations can document the impact of climate change on plants and animals. They introduce the topic of phenology and data collection, the impact of climate change on phenology, and how individuals can become citizen scientists.

Construct, analyze, and/or interpret graphical displays of data and/or large data sets to identify linear and nonlinear relationships.

Ask questions that arise from careful observation of phenomena, models, or unexpected results, to clarify and/or seek additional information.

Ask questions that arise from careful observation of phenomena, or unexpected results, to clarify and/or seek additional information.

Plan an investigation or test a design individually and collaboratively to produce data to serve as the basis for evidence as part of building and revising models, supporting explanations for phenomena, or testing solutions to problems. Consider possible variables or effects and evaluate the confounding investigation’s design to ensure variables are controlled.

Ecosystems have carrying capacities, which are limits to the numbers of organisms and populations they can support. These limits result from such factors as the availability of living and nonliving resources and from such challenges such as predation, competition, and disease. Organisms would have the capacity to produce populations of great size were it not for the fact that environments and resources are finite. This fundamental tension affects the abundance (number of individuals) of species in any given ecosystem.

The many dynamic and delicate feedbacks between the biosphere and other Earth systems cause a continual co-evolution of Earth’s surface and the life that exists on it.

The sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources.

Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic and atmospheric flow patterns.

Human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or destroying natural habitats and causing the extinction of other species. But changes to Earth’s environments can have different impacts (negative and positive) for different living things.

Changes in the atmosphere due to human activity have increased carbon dioxide concentrations and thus affect climate.

Scientists and engineers can make major contributions by developing technologies that produce less pollution and waste and that preclude ecosystem degradation.

Empirical evidence is required to differentiate between cause and correlation and make claims about specific causes and effects.

Much of science deals with constructing explanations of how things change and how they remain stable.

When investigating or describing a system, the boundaries and initial conditions of the system need to be defined and their inputs and outputs analyzed and described using models.

Feedback (negative or positive) can stabilize or destabilize a system.

Cause and effect relationships may be used to predict phenomena in natural or designed systems.

Empirical evidence is needed to identify patterns.

Change and rates of change can be quantified and modeled over very short or very long periods of time. Some system changes are irreversible.

Phenomena may have more than one cause, and some cause and effect relationships in systems can only be described using probability.

Systems may interact with other systems; they may have sub-systems and be a part of larger complex systems.

Stability might be disturbed either by sudden events or gradual changes that accumulate over time.

Patterns can be used to identify cause-and-effect relationships.

Explanations of stability and change in natural or designed systems can be constructed by examining the changes over time and processes at different scales, including the atomic scale.

Small changes in one part of a system might cause large changes in another part.

Systems in dynamic equilibrium are stable due to a balance of feedback mechanisms.

Climate Change and Citizen Science

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Science and Engineering Practices

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Crosscutting Concepts