Screenshot of Sci.Spy application for iPhone
This is an application I’ve been wanting to see for some time now – so glad it’s a reality! Sci.Spy lets you take your photos of natural things (animals, plants, fungi, etc) and upload them to a database for use by scientists studying species distributions and the like.
It’s a natural extension of many smaller citizen science projects, for example, one which allowed the cataloging of tree species in British urban environments. However, with Discovery Science behind the wheel and with the integration of an iPhone app which simplifies the process of uploading mobile phone images with geo tag information, this network looks as though it could become a very deep source of data.
As someone who travels pretty much everywhere with camera in hand, it’s exciting to think of the possibilities for individual species identification as well. So often I take images of things, wild plants especially, which then require a lot of web researching to figure out what species or variety I’ve taken. If a large body of data is amassed, then eventually this site could be used by foragers and and individuals looking to ID plants and animals in their surroundings with better accuracy. And for foraging especially, that is quite important!
Want to find out more? Check out the Sci.Spy site at Discovery.com, or download the iPhone app.
Here are some other interesting citizen science sites:
Urban Forest Map, The Wild Lab, The Milky Way Project, and ScienceForCitizens.net (has a listing of many citizen scientist projects).
Solarious - stumbling away from the grid 