Citizen Science

Thorugh your help with WildLIVE!, you help to view a huge amount of data and thus support the scientists directly in their work.

Furthermore, in cooperation with many people, and artificial intelligence, you will help to develop sustainable biomonitoring. You also get unique insights into the Bolivian wilderness and can take unique photos yourself, with which you can inspire even more people for nature!

Anyone who wants to get involved with Frankfurt’s city-trees and can record the condition of selected trees twice a month over the summer can take part in this three-year project.

Please Note: We have already received so much interest for this year, that registration is only possible for those who would like to participate starting in 2021, in the early summer season.

This project is a cooperation between Senckenberg, the Senckenberg-start-up Phytoprove, and the city Frankfurt, which is sponsored by the Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft

Team:
Dr. Thomas Berberich (Senckenberg Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum)
tberberich@senckenberg.de

Dr. Julia Krohmer (Senckenberg Wissenschaftskoordination, Transfer)
jkrohmer@senckenberg.de

Dipl. Biol. Daniel Weber (Phytoprove Pflanzenanalytik UG)
weber@phytoprove.com

Anyone interested in the lichen genus Lecanora is cordially invited to participate in a joint project funded by the DFG via the LECANOMICS portal. In this project we want to give amateurs access to molecular genetic data and thus enable them to actively participate in taxonomic projects on Lecanora.

Contact: Christian Prinzen
Region: Worldwide
LECANOMICS

With adapted mowing, green meadows can be transformed into habitats for flowers, butterflies, wild bees, and grasshoppers. It thus makes an important contribution to promoting biodiversity. Citizens can participate by taking care of a meadow and sharing their experiences in a blog on the project website. With the help of an app, the arriving butterflies can be determined and the observations reported.

Contact: Matthias Nuß
Region: Saxony
Projectpage

You can report your finds online throughout Germany. Use the app “Schmetterlinge Deutschland”, which was created in April 2019. This contains a list of all butterfly species known from Germany. The data is checked by experts and made available online on distribution maps. They form the basis for the creation of the Red List of Butterflies in Germany.

Contact: Matthias Nuß, Franziska Bauer
Region: Germany
Projectpage
To “Schmetterlinge Deutschlands” in the App Store

Record your observations photographically and inform us of your report. It’s that easy! You contribute to setting up an information portal about Saxon insects with distribution maps, identification aids and species profiles. Historical data is also incorporated from the literature and collections of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research.
Participants can get to know each other through workshops and on joint excursions.

Contact: Matthias Nuß
Region: Saxony
Projectpage

Together with volunteer area supervisors and researchers, you will work on understanding the condition and population genetics of the last stocks of the critically endangered European hamster (Cricetus cricetus). As an area supervisor, you will receive information from us where a search appears promising, report your findings if successful and collect genetic sample material. Or, you can find out more about our excursions.

Get involved
Gallery

Contact: Tobias Erik Reiners
Region: Hessen
Projectpage

Your data can be used to determine the optimal locations for the protective measures.
You can then see your individual contribution on the project website (website is still under construction) on the current distribution map. The website and the dissemination atlas are scientifically monitored and evaluated by the Senckenberg Research Institute.

Contact: Tobias Erik Reiners
Region: Hessen, Niedersachsen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringen
Projectpage

• Civil excavation to research Upper Miocene ecosystems
• Kaufbeuren (Allgäu, Bavaria)
• One of the most important paleontological discoveries in Germany
• Great apes & 100 other vertebrate species

Participation

• 2017 und 2018 ca. 50 Citizens from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland
• Age 8-75 Years
• Familes, Youth, Seniors
• Participation is free (Accommodation & half board are taken over by SGN)

Framework

• Digging for 6 weeks in August and September
• So far only word-of-mouth advertising
• Fixed tribe of >25 citizens, and a rising trend
• Media exposure for research publications in November 2019

Support research with your photos and expand your and our knowledge about the flora of the continent. The researchers continue to rely on the participation of interested citizens, Africa vacationers and amateur photographers in order to let the online photo guide grow continuously. After a scientific examination, your illustrative photos will be added to the online directory.

Contact: Marco Schmidt, Stefan Dressler
Region: Africa
Photoguide
Helpers

Find out which species can be observed in your area or document and share your own observations.
The free app is available in six languages ​​for Apple and Android smartphones.

Yale University and the University of Florida are leading the way in a large consortium.

The main aim of the project is to record, document and present all wild plant species. This can only be achieved with the help of interested citizens, who report their findings and thus contribute to the growing “flora”, in which 1,800 plant species are listed so far.

Contact: Indra Starke-Ottich
Region: Frankfurt
Projektpage

Everyone can contribute and thus close previous knowledge gaps. Your information helps to better understand the distribution and way of life of the species occurring in Saxony and to create identification aids and distribution maps.

Contact: Katrin Schniebs
Region: Saxony
Projectpage

We would like to bring together historical landscape photographs from private photo holdings onto an online photo platform. The digital photo collection is intended to document the changes in living spaces over the past century and make them available for research purposes. To do this, we need the help of committed local citizens – that is, from Görlitz and the surrounding area – who provide their analog individual images, photo albums and slides.

An important prerequisite is the most specific information possible about the photographer, place and time of the photos. This information is invaluable and should be recorded while the photographers or their friends and relatives still remember it.

The selected photographs are professionally and carefully digitized by us. After processing (digitization and recording of important image information), all participants receive their original photos and a digital image of each selected image back.

For example, photos of forests, meadows, mountains, bodies of water or fields are suitable, but also photos of parks, cottage gardens and village structures.

To arrange a personal appointment to hand in your photos, albums or slides, please contact Frau Neumeister und Frau Baber, E-Mail: landschaftsfotos@senckenberg.de, Tel.: 03581 4760 5270.

The reappearance of lichens is one of the exciting processes that are currently taking place in our nature. As you observe this change, report your lichen finds and help research into the phenomenon.

Contact: Volker Otte
Region: Dreiländereck Deutschland, Polen und Tschechien
Projectpage

Within the project „museum4punkt0“, an online portal will be developed at the Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz by 2020 for the native soil animals double-pods, centipedes and land lice (Diplopoda, Chilopoda, Oniscidea). With the support of citizen scientists, intuitive, understandable and lay-friendly interactive identification keys for PCs and smartphones are being developed for around 250 species. There are profiles of every species for the groups of animals little known to the public (e.g. distribution, ecology, description, pictures).
You have the option of submitting findings to the portal, participating in science yourself and thus actively participating in research into the distribution, frequency and ecology of these soil animals.

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

Contact: Peter Decker
Region: Germany
More Info

Are you 10 years old and want to know more about woodpecker smiths, witch rings and ant lions?
Do you want to track down bats and owls on church towers?
Do you want to know how far balsam can jump?
Do you want to grow monsters in a flower pot?
Then come to the Senckenberg Nature Scouts!
Your results contribute to research and are needed in various projects.

Contact: Christiane Ritz, Heike Reise
Region: Saxony
More Info

In 2016, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation published the nationwide Red Lists of Centipedes (Chilopoda) and Double-footers (Diplopoda) in Germany for the first time. Two citizen scientists, one scientist from the Zoological State Collection in Munich and two scientists from the Senckenberg Museum in Görlitz were involved in evaluating the endangerment status of the 118 double-pod and 56 centipede species based on the population size and population development. This expert report for these neglected soil animals can be used as an important instrument for spatial and environmentally relevant planning, in nature conservation and in politics. In addition, updated total species lists for Germany were presented. The updated Red Lists are in preparation and we would also be happy to receive your distribution data for centipedes and double pods, please contact us.

Contact: Peter Decker
Region: Germany

In 2009 the DJN (German Youth Association for Nature Observation) published the book “Doppelfüßer (Diplopoda) Ostdeutschlands” on the determination, biology and distribution of this group of animals for all friends of double-footed animals and those who want to become one. Although it refers to the eastern federal states of Germany, it covers practically the entire northern and central part of Germany. Citizen scientist Harald Hauser and Senckenberg scientist Karin Voigtländer have created a basic work for interested laypeople for these parts of Germany for the first time.
A revised and expanded version with all species except those occurring in the Alps will be available in 2020 from the DJN under the title “Die Doppelfüßer Deutschlands”. Please contact us for more information.

Contact: Karin Voigtländer
Region: Germany

Support the virtual herbarium as a volunteer botanist! By revising the documents and digitizing the data, you contribute to the Virtual Herbarium of Upper Lusatia, which provides high-resolution photos of the plant species occurring in Lusatia via the online portal.

Kontakt: Christiane Ritz, Karsten Wesche
Region: Sachsen, Oberlausitz
Projectpage

Do you make plant sociological recordings? Contribute to the vegetation database for West Africa. With a free account you can use all functions of the database and manage data sets for your own project and use public data. Your data can be archived and released for other projects.

Contact: Marco Schmidt, Stefan Dressler
Region: Westafrika
Projectpage

The Rothmaler – Exkursionsflora von Deutschland series serves both researchers, students, amateur botanists and nature conservationists as reliable and up-to-date identification literature on German flora. Three new volumes were published last year. More than 30 specialized taxonomists, who often do not work at universities or research museums, support the editorial team as contribution authorship and show the high level of contribution that Citizen Science can make.

Contact: Christiane Ritz
Region: Germany

This online herbarium helps to better understand plant species of the German flora that are difficult to identify. High-resolution scans and, in many cases, detailed recordings of relevant features of the herbarium specimens selected by experts are offered as checking aids for the determination result.
This enables you to make a valid comparison with determination results (e.g. Rothmaler). There is also clear information on the most important characteristics and distribution of the respective taxa.

Contact: Christiane Ritz, Stefan Dressler
Region: Germany
Projectpage

Citizen scientists can report unpublished chromosome counts to the database.

The database contains all published chromosome counts on plants from Germany, including numerous previously unpublished counts. The identification of the plants was checked (if possible) and the location georeferenced.
We look forward to your data contributions, please contact us.

Contact: Juraj Paule
Region: Germany
Projectpage

Bangladesh is a very biodiverse country and with the Sundarbans has the largest contiguous mangrove forest area on earth. At the same time, Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and is heavily affected by the effects of climate change. In addition, a steady increase in the level of consumption and energy consumption goes hand in hand with increasing environmental pollution, for example from plastic. The communication of species knowledge is all the more important today. Wildmentor’s mobile app shows which species are found in the various habitats of Bangladesh and which of them are already threatened. Users can also share their observation data and thus contribute to the current state of knowledge and discourse.

Cooperation-Partners:
Federführend sind in Bangladesh die Zoological Society of Bangladesh (ZSB), University of Dhaka (DU), Jagannath University (JnU), Jahangirnagar University (JU), Chittagong University (CU), Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD); Deutsche Kooperationspartner: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Technische Universität München.

Contact: Safiqul Islam, Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden (SNSD) 
Region: Bangladesch
Projectpage
free App

In the “Wildcat Jump” project carried out jointly with BUND and funded as part of the Federal Biological Diversity Program, over 500 volunteer citizen scientists helped set up and control hair traps to obtain DNA samples from wild cats. Highly standardized data from thousands of samples could be obtained from the nationwide data set. A special volume to be published shortly in the journal “Natur und Landschaft” published by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation deals intensively with the project and the successful integration of Citizen Science.

With the call “Who will find the beer snail?” we wanted to discover the last refuges of the beer snowfall. This small nudibranch crawls in gardens, along walls and sidewalks at night, or can be found on damp basement walls.
The finds should be reported to Heike Reise, Senckenbergmuseum für Naturkunde Görlitz, with a photo and the location and dates of the find.

The zigzag sawfly introduced to Europe, whose larvae only eat elm leaves, is on the advance in Germany. Their high mobility, short generation succession and the ability to produce up to four generations per year are the reason for the rapid reproduction of the species and its spread over large areas in Europe. Entomologists from the Senckenberg German Entomological Institute in Müncheberg invited citizens who have sighted zigzag sawfly in Germany to send their observations to the  SDEI. It turned out that A. leucopoda spreads at a speed of 50-90 km per year. The species is currently widespread in Germany in the northeast and in Bavaria. Occurrences further west in Belgium and the Netherlands are likely due to carry-over. A scientific article based on the data collected in the project is available here.