Reviewing the First Month of the Zooniverse Challenge

My name is Emily Jones (she/her), and I’m the Zooniverse intern this semester at the Center for Digital Scholarship. I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in Library and Information Science at Simmons University with a concentration in Cultural Heritage Informatics. In my role, I’ll be creating documentation on how to establish Zooniverse projects at Northeastern and developing a guide on crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing utilizes an online community of volunteers to complete tasks for larger projects. It allows volunteers to get personally involved in projects of interest and for researchers to have their data analyzed quickly and cost-effectively.

The Zooniverse Challenge at Northeastern invites students, faculty, and staff to contribute to a project each month, making them eligible for a prize. By completing a questionnaire about your experience, you will be entered into a monthly drawing for a prize. There will also be monthly informal group sessions to work on Zooniverse on the third Thursday of each month from 3:00-4:00 p.m. in the CDS. Come and ask questions, eat snacks, and share projects! The theme for the Zooniverse Challenge in September is the environment. The suggested projects include: Wild Behavior – Philadelphia, Savanna Spy: Sound, SquirrelMapper, Chirp Check, and Indigo Snake Watch. Each month, I will highlight one of the featured projects from the theme in a blog post.

Of the five suggested projects, I chose to work on Wild Behavior – Philadelphia, Zooniverse project at the Integrative Ecology Lab at Temple University. The project is seeking assistance in reviewing photos of animals in Philadelphia, PA. Using motion-activated cameras, they capture images of animals in urban and suburban settings. The AI tool Wildlife Insights automatically filters out blank images and photos that contain human faces. Zooniverse users then analyze the pictures because the AI tool is not perfect and requires human feedback. Although the AI tool filters photos, it still makes errors, such as images appearing with no animals. With the help of the Zooniverse community, researchers gain a deeper understanding of how animals live in urban environments and how to support nature in cities.

The project currently focuses on images captured at an urban cemetery in Philadelphia. The graveyard has burial areas with headstones and turf grass, as well as areas without headstones and native plants. The research team aims to determine if there is a difference in animal behavior, presence, and abundance within these burial areas. This Zooniverse project is easy to get started with and accessible to users of all ages. I enjoyed this project because it’s easy to do whenever you have time, and I like looking at photos of animals. I learned more about animal species through this project and what it means to exhibit signs of vigilance. There were times when I was unsure of the species of an animal, but the field guide was helpful. The field guide includes information on species identification, dependent young, postures, behaviors, and signs of vigilance. The field guide can be found in the right-hand corner:

Volunteers are encouraged to make their best guess based on the field guide, and it is perfectly fine to be incorrect. Multiple volunteers analyze the same image, allowing the group to reach a consensus on the species. Through the use of crowdsourcing, you can gather various perspectives on data to gain a more well-rounded view. The discussion forum allows users to ask questions and share observations with the research team and the Zooniverse community. If volunteers are unsure of a species, they can post in the discussion forum to get help from the Zooniverse community.

There are other Zooniverse projects that offer an opportunity to learn more about animal behavior in different environments. Zooniverse volunteers support necessary research while learning more about urban animals. Researchers gain a better understanding of animal behavior in urban environments and the effects of urbanization on them. For example, Savanna Spy: Sound, another suggested project this month, also has artificial intelligence results needing to be verified. The goal of this project is to study the effects of prescribed fire and livestock grazing (pyric herbivory) on prairies in Texas through the use of bird sounds. AI is used to identify birds based on their sounds, but help is needed to verify these results. Together, these projects show the power of crowdsourcing and people-powered research. Make sure to submit the quick questionnaire for your chance to win a prize! For next month’s theme, we will be traveling to Outer Space!