To protect biodiversity, we need to know more about it. Academy scientists travel the globe in their efforts to learn more, but they can’t be everywhere—we need your help!
Citizen scientists' collective observations of plants and animals, wherever they're found, are beginning to creating an important global record: what biodiversity is found where, how healthy populations are, and what's changing in the environment. By crowd-sourcing this kind of data collection and analysis, the citizen science movement helps science to answer some of the biggest questions we face today.
Learn more about our Bay Area projects, biodiversity surveys, and grassroots bioblitzes—what we've found, why we're looking, and how to get involved.
Join us for a grassroots bioblitz! We gather at local parks to find and document as many species as possible.
The City Nature Challenge is a bioblitz-style competition where cities compete to see who can make the most observations of nature, who can find the most species, and who can engage the most people. Join us in showing the world how much biodiversity the Bay Area holds!
Snapshot Cal Coast is a California statewide effort to document our coastal biodiversity and create a "snapshot" in time of where species are located along our coast. So dig out your rubber boots and come join us in the tidepools!
Our bioblitzes are powered by iNaturalist, our in-house, citizen science platform. It's a community-powered website and app that makes it easy to upload and share your observations in the field and to get help from other users with flora and fauna IDs.
A selection of videos, articles, and press that offer a closer look at citizen science at the Academy.
Have questions about our citizen science programs? Want to get involved? Email us at citizenscience@calacademy.org.
Academy citizen science is led by Rebecca Johnson, Alison Young, and Annie Miller.
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