Latest News Updates
December 2020
NBN Award Results
Congratulations to all Winners and Runners up!
On 18th November 2020 the NBN Awards Ceremony announced the winners and runners up of the NBN Awards for Wildlife Recording 2020!
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The Isle of Wight had made the shortlist in 2 categories:
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The Group Award - Isle of Wight Natural History & Archaeological Society
The Young Person's Award - Neeve O'Flynn-Mundin (creator of Citizen Science IOW)
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It was a hotly contested ceremony with so many amazing and inspirational people and groups that both the 'Isle of Wight Natural History & Archaeological Society' and Neeve O'Flynn-Mundin where just 'Piped to the Post'!
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The ceremony was a lovely reminder that there are many inspirational people, communities, groups, museums and societies, from across the country, who are all doing their bit to engage, encourage, looking after, educating and conserving nature and the world around them. This Award Ceremony highlights that and rewards these amazing people by recognising all their hard work and it was an honer to be nominated along side them!
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See below for the Winners and Runners up for each category:
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here are five Award categories:
• NBN Young Person’s Award (open to individuals aged 11-20)
• NBN Newcomer Award (open to individuals 21 years +)
• NBN Award for wildlife recording – Marine (open to individuals 21 years +)
• NBN Award for wildlife recording – Terrestrial (open to individuals 21 years +)
• NBN Group Award (no age restrictions)
NBN Young Person’s Award (open to individuals aged 11-20)
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Winner: Xander Johnston, Age 14, from Aviemore, Scotland
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"Xander was one of the Youth Ambassadors involved in the 2019 State of Nature report. Xander’s enthusiasm for nature is infectious and his presentation skills match those of a seasoned professional nature presenter.
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Xander uses his own YouTube channel to promote the importance of insects as well as educating viewers on ‘how to rewild your garden’ or ‘how to make an insect hotel’.
Over the past three years, Xander has recorded over 800 hours of volunteering, surveying, and recording for a number of different projects and he has identified many new sites for rare insects."
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Runner Up: Reuben Nebbett-Blades, Age 17, from Garboldisham, Norfolk
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"Reuben has been a very active recorder for a number of years. Since 2017, Reuben has submitted over 1300
records of almost 700 species into iRecord.
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Flora is Reuben’s speciality, although his records cover an impressively wide range of taxonomic groups with birds, bryophytes, fungi and all major insect groups also well represented.
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Through Twitter and WhatsApp, Reuben has been very active, helping other young naturalists with identification questions and sharing opportunities for wildlife events."
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NBN Group Award (no age restrictions)
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Winners: The Mammal Society, covering the whole of the UK
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"Established in 1954 as a UK-wide charity advocating science-led mammal conservation, the Society now
comprises 1,400 members and 36 local mammal groups who carry out recording and regular mammal surveys.
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The Mammal Society nationally leads efforts to collect and share information on mammals, encourages research to learn more about their ecology and distribution, and contributes to the conservation of mammals.
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Since the launch of the “Mammal Mapper” app and its precursor the “Mammal Tracker”, the Mammal Society has increased its number of expert verifiers to process the increased volume of data that it is now receiving."
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Runners Up: Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group, from the Manhood Peninsula, West Sussex
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"This volunteer-led group, was set up over 20 years ago to encourage local residents to record the wildlife on the Manhood Peninsula.
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The Manhood Wildlife and Heritage Group (MWHG) has a membership of between 80 – 100 volunteers. They stepped up their recording activity, when in 2013, a consultant ecologist hired by a developer said that their area was a “wildlife desert with no significant species or areas of interest”.
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Since then, MWHG has submitted so much data – particularly on water voles – that all waterways and ditches in their area are now considered to be water vole habitat and therefore a developer must prove that they
are not present – which is a significant policy change."
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If you want to see all the other winners and runners up for all the categories.
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Follow the links below to see the full list on the NBN's website!
​If you would like to nominate someone for the 2021 NBN Awards, see below for more information:
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​The National Biodiversity Network Trust will make the awards annually.
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Nominations may be made by anyone (including people and organisations that are not Network members). You may even nominate yourself!
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Individuals, groups of people or entire organisations are eligible for the awards.
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Nominations submission period will be around May to July 2021 (Dates to be confirmed).
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CITIZEN SCIENCE IOW
Ignite your Inner Scientist
November 2020
NBN Award Nominations
Exciting NEWS!
The Isle of Wight has been recognised for it's scientific recording contributions and has been nominated + shortlisted for 2 National Biodiversity Network (NBN) 'Awards for Wildlife Recording 2020':
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1. NBN Group Award 2020 -
Isle of Wight Natural History & Archaeological Society - visit their website...
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2. NBN Young Person's Award 2020 -
We are very proud to announce that Neeve O'Flynn-Mundin (creator of Citizen Science IOW) has been Nominated for the NBN Young Person's Award 2020 and has now been shortlisted as a finalist!
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Twenty-two individuals and groups have been shortlisted as Finalists in the five different categories of the NBN Awards for Wildlife Recording 2020. NBN stands for the National Biodiversity Network!
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The Awards recognise and celebrate the outstanding contributions adults and young people are making to wildlife recording and data sharing, which is helping to improve our understanding of the UK’s biodiversity.
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NBN will be Celebrating the winners of all the 2020 Awards at a special ceremony online on Wednesday 18th November as part of the 2020 NBN annual conference (which is also taking place online).
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I would like to sincerely give:
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an over whelming thanks to Rachael Baker from Winchester Science Museum who so kindly nominated me for this award – I can’t thank you enough for this wonderful unexpected gift!!
A HUGE thank you to Dave Logan, Regional Manager of POA Learning IOW; Hazel, Community Organiser for Our Place Community Cafe, West Wight Sports Centre, Freshwater; Oliver Mattson, Paleontologist Director Dinosaur Expeditions Centre; and Rachel Thomson, Community Centre Manager of Downside Community Centre - Pan - Newport, who all supported the Citizen Science Workshops right from the beginning. And if it wasn’t for Rachel applying for the British Science Week 2020 Funding, we wouldn’t have successfully organised the Festival of Citizen Science in March 2020 just before Lock Down – so this award is truly a joint effort!
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And Thanks to all the Community Centres, Communities, Museums and Scientific Communities on the Isle of Wight and Hampshire, who supported me and welcomed our Citizen Science Workshops into their areas, without your support our British Science Week in March 2020 wouldn't have happened and this website wouldn't even exist! I can't wait to come and see you all/share fun science workshop with you once again - as soon as 'Lock Down 2' is over!
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Also, I would like to thank the NBN for running the awards and for recognising Citizen Scientists whose work is invaluable, as without them, it would take longer to classify projects and make scientific discoveries! To find out more about the NBN and the amazing work they do or to link up with them on future projects click on the Find Out More below:
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NBN Conference iSpotnature
Autumn Bioblitz
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Join me and help us countdown to the NBN Conference on Wednesday 18 November by joining a mini Bioblitz with iSpot to capture a map of autumn’s wildlife! All you need is your eyes, ears, a camera and access to a computer to upload your finds direct to iSpotnature website... Using the iSpot Citizen Science Account below or create your own account!
iSpot:
Username
Citizen Science IOW
Passward
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CITIZEN SCIENCE IOW
Ignite your Inner Scientist
August 2020
Nature up close and personal
A Wellbeing Experiment
Funded by:
in partnership with
During this period of lockdown and social isolation, many of us have learned (or re-discovered) how important nature is to our happiness and wellbeing. Maybe we are noticing nature more in gardens and parks, the countryside, or simply looking from our windows.
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Engaging with nature will remain valuable, even as lockdown restrictions are eased.
But what we don’t know is how different types of nature activities affect us differently.
That’s where we need your help: join with hundreds of others across Britain,
to take part in Nature Up Close and Personal.
So, whether you’re a nature nerd or nature usually passes you by – this is for you.
We’ll give you simple activities – spending 10 minutes or so each day, for five days over the course of a week - to experience nature up close and personal, and we’ll ask you to take part in short surveys about your experiences.
Together we can discover how our wellbeing is affected noticing nature up close and personal.
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Purpose of the study
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To compare the success of different ways to engage people with nature, we’d like to ask you some questions about how you feel about nature, what you do for nature and a little bit about you. We will then give you details of an activity taking 10-15 minutes to do at least five times over an eight-day period.
July 2020
GOAL 1
Increase the amount of open and interoperable citizen science data to help answer more complex, global questions than any dataset could address alone.
Through a public call to action, the Earth Challenge mobile application empowers volunteers around the world. EC2020 will also create a new open data platform, the Citizen Science Cloud, to help people discover and access citizen science data through open APIs.
GOAL 2
Equip and empower people around the world to understand and act on the data collected to build safer, healthier communities.
The Earth Challenge platform will offer open data analysis and visualization tools, educational resources such as lesson plans, and “What You Can Do” materials. These resources will make citizen science accessible and meaningful, linking participation in scientific research to education and action.
Earth Challenge 2020 seeks to be the world’s largest ever coordinated citizen science campaign. The initiative integrates existing citizen science projects and builds capacity for new ones — all to grow citizen science worldwide. Using mobile technology and open citizen science data, Earth Challenge 2020 empowers people around the world to monitor and mitigate threats to environmental and human health in their communities.
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This means that anyone can upload data they've collected
(either alone or as part of a group) which will then be integrated with other data sources locally, nationally and internationally e.g. if you're water testing/measuring pollution and/or plastic beach cleaning you can upload your data (i.e. location, type of items found and quantity) and then Earth Challenge 2020 will catalogue your data and everyone else's to create a map of the
local, national and international areas.
This People-Powered data will then enable a Global response to Climate Change
by challenging Policy Makers within Companies and Governments.
This is very exciting and a Project, we at Citizen Science IOW will be linking up with
and following closely over the coming years.
