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Prairie Project on Zooniverse: citizen science and inquiry-based learning for promoting rangeland literacy
Author
Wied, JP
Jaime, X
Gao, W
Wu, XB
Angerer, JP
Publisher
XII International Rangeland Congress
Publication Year
2025
Body

The Prairie Project aims to promote pyric herbivory and mixed species grazing as climate-smart agricultural practises for sustaining livestock production and other ecosystem services of rangelands in the Great Plains. Key to fulfilling such a shift of management paradigm is effectively engaging land managers and professionals, future professional and decision makers, and the public through integrated research, education, and extension efforts. Leveraging citizen science as an effective tool for research and education and outreach through crowdsourcing, we have been developing citizen science projects on the Zooniverse platform for engaging secondary and undergraduate students as well as the public, based on research data collected at our research and demonstration ranches across the Great Plains. In one of these projects, students and the public engage in identifying animal species and their activities as captured on camera-trap photographs from a research ranch. The data generated are essential for studying the spatial and temporal distributions and behaviour of livestock and wildlife in different vegetation communities and with different burn histories. Crowdsourcing the data classification also presents educators with a platform for designing and implementing high-impact learning activities in classrooms and extension programs. Importantly, this also allows us to reach a broader and more diverse audience outside the traditional range management and ecology community. We have developed and implemented learning activities in an introductory ecology course at a research university and are developing learning activities for additional educational settings. During the last two years, over 950 students have engaged in this Zooniverse project as part of an authentic inquiry project to explore the effect of fire on animal distribution and behaviour in different vegetation settings and developing critical thinking and communication skills. Assessment data show that these experiential learning activities resulted in significant gains in understanding the scientific practice and rangeland literacy.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Additional Information
This paper is part of the larger XII International Rangelands Congress Proceedings. Page Numbers: 39-42. Theme: Theme 1 / Cultivating knowledge among pastoralists’ children, students, rangeland professional, and broader society
ISSN
978-0-646-72121-7
Conference Name
International Rangeland Congress
Collection
International Rangelands Congress
Keywords
authentic inquiry
STEM education