Citizen Scientists on the Living Roof - part one

Last Sunday I participated in the California's Academy of Sciences Living Roof Project. A chance to go up and actually walk out among the hills on the roof! The CAS naturalist center is working on developing citizen scientist programs. The most well known of this type of program is probably the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's e-bird program in which birds from around the world record bird sightings in an online database. The ornithologists then have access to a much wider array of data than if they were doing all the work themselves. The citizens get to feel like they're part of an important project, learn something about the research activities and help connect the organization with the communtiy. The CAS has started this summer taking groups of 15 people at a time to count birds, plants and arthropods on the living roof. It is known as a living roof as opposed to a green roof because of the great diversity of bird, insect and other life the roof supports.

The living roof project group gathered in back of the CAS at 9:30am, well before the exhibits were open. We were taken up to the naturalist center for a brief introduction by Alana, one of the CAS naturalists. She spoke a bit about the different layers that compose the roof - insulation, weatherproofing, drainage, growing medium etc. During construction 50,000 coconut fiber trays of native plants were installed on the roof. For the most part the trays have biodegraded and though the nine varieties of plants originally covered the roof most of the area has been overtaken by just a few species. The area around the observation deck is more highly maintained to display diverse plant species for the public.

Along with counting plants, we would also be counting birds so our group was split into two. The birders picked up binoculars, while the plant counters donned fluorescent yellow safety vests and we all headed up to the roof.


Check back tomorrow for Part Two where we go out on the roof!