Sunday, April 15, 2007

Weekend Shameless Self Promotion

For anyone interested in Life on the Purple Loosestrife, a citizen scientist project I started to photodocument insects and other organisms using purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), I've posted a pdf version of a presentation I gave last week at the 4th Annual Massachusetts Water Resources Research Center Conference.

Since the LOTPL Project is all volunteer, all public, I felt it was only fair for any data I collect to be public as well. If you want more information, you can check out the Life on the Purple Loosestrife Flickr group, or even download the latest raw data in an Excel file.

Along with its sister project, Life on the Japanese Knotweed, this has turned out to be a very rewarding experience for me, and hopefully for some of the volunteers too :-). I am looking forward to collecting another season's worth of data this summer and hopefully recruiting some new volunteers as well!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As academics, it is always a challenge to do this kind of work and disseminate it effectively. Most of the venues I've found that are peer-reviewed are computer science conferences, which aren't going to reach most ecologists or the general public. I like how you are using your blog to reach a wider audience for the presentation.

Donwatcher said...

You may be aware of this but I read a good article on this topic awhile ago. It is called "Interactions Between Lythrum salicaria and Native Organisms" by Mark G. Anderson in the Journal of Environmental Management, Vol 19, No 2, pp 225-231, 1995.

DonWatcher