Edmonton-made app makes it easier for citizen scientists to count birds
Edmonton-based Punchcard Systems has developed NatureCounts, an app that makes counting birds easier for citizen scientists and helps enhance conservation data collection in the process.
"Birds, and the migratory patterns of birds, and how birds interact with our ecology, is actually a bit of, we'll say, a 'canary (in the coal mine)' when it comes to things like climate change," Sam Jenkins, managing partner at Punchcard Systems, told Taproot.
The app, created in partnership with Birds Canada, currently supports 70 different research protocols across North America and is aimed more at citizen scientists and birdwatching hobbyists than academics. Users can sign up for a point count event, where they record all birds they see or hear for a period of time.
The app replaces the traditional paper-based method, where bird watchers would take a stopwatch, pen, and paper and monitor birds from a fixed location for a set period of time to track biodiversity data. "Now, there can be multiple locations in a watch, and the research can move around a lot more freely. It adds a lot more flexibility," Jenkins said. "If you're doing a watch and you need to move because of something outside of your control, that movement is also easier to capture as well, and it creates a more 'three-dimensional' approach to how that data is being collected, rather than just a single point in time and space."
The app uses GPS and satellite imagery and does away with some of the shorthand that other research methods use, which may act as a barrier to citizen scientists. "We've reduced some of that friction in terms of what you would have to know to be able to participate in the study," Jenkins said. "You can very much be a novice participant rather than an expert researcher."
Bird counting is important research on a species level and for the whole ecosystem, Jenkins said. Knowing where animals are can help researchers understand whether a species is reproducing and if their habitat is moving. On a wider scale, the movements of animals can show changing patterns. "As we're seeing temperatures change, cooling, heating, we see patterns get interrupted. That data, when a researcher is able to look at it en masse based on a lot of people submitting data, you can see better patterns, and those patterns can be used to be able to either predict or understand the changes to our natural environment."
Early trials show that the technology introduced in the app has already saved the equivalent of five years of time that would have gone to manual data entry, a news release said.
"By reducing errors and delays in the data collection, researchers are getting cleaner, clearer data sets faster, which means that they can be looking at the research in a in a more predictable way, and they can be producing and publishing faster as well, which can then be used in real time more effectively by people who are creating change," Jenkins added.
Punchcard also recently developed Check the Label, a database that allows users to scan a product's universal product code to determine if it's Canadian. Jenkins said the company exists to "build software that really matters.
"Our goal is to work on projects that have a really tangible impact, and ... NatureCounts is a perfect example of where we are using digital transformation as a tool for really positive impact."
