Vanishing Firefly Project (2010 - 2015)

The goal of the project is to provide a handy tool and a fun activity for the general public to evaluate the impacts of urbanization and other human activities on the natural environments and their communities. Through their participation in this family-oriented citizen scientist project - determining the abundance of fireflies, citizens (from school age children to

seniors) could have a better understanding on the importance of sustainability and pay more attention to the environmental quality in their communities, and eventually choose to practice sustainable behaviors in their daily life. There are two specific objectives:

Objective 1: Enhancement of mobile phone app functionality- To evaluate the applicability and the functionality of the mobile phone app in a field survey study

Objective 2: Integration of mobile phone technology into citizen scientist project - To design a user-friendly app and develop associated and supported tools for environmental science education

Field Surveys & Workshops at Hobcaw Barony, Georgetown SC

Publications:

Cook M, Lyons R, White DL, Chow AT, Chong J, and Pargas RP (2015) Examining the impact of social media in a citizen science project.  Proceeding of 2015 NARST Annual International Conference, Chicago IL (April 11-14, 2015) [Accepted].

White DL, Pargas RP, Chow AT, Chong J, Cook M, and Tak I (2014)  The vanishing firefly project: Engaging citizen scientists with a mobile technology and read-time reporting framework.  Proceeding of the 5th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshops on GeoStreaming (IWS), Dallas TX (Nov 4, 2014).

Chow AT, Chong JH, Cook M, and White D. (2013) Vanishing fireflies: A citizen scientist project promoting scientific inquiry, service-learning, sustainability, and stewardship. Science Education and Civic Engagement 6:1 23-31.