#SciFund

#SciFund Challenge: Saving Hawaii’s Coral Reefs

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.

Saving Hawaii’s Coral Reefs

Levi Lewis is a graduate student interested in how humans activities alter the ecology, health, and resilience of habitat-forming species.  He has assembled an interdisciplinary team to study coral reef development around the island of Maui. Funding will be used to support travel, equipment, maintenance, and analysis.

 

You can check out Levi’s blog, accretinglife, where he discusses this project and his motivations in more detail. Go check out Saving Hawaii’s Coral Reefs and make a donation to help out a worthy project.

#SciFund Challenge: Behold, the Power of Seagrass!

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.

Behold, the Power of Seagrass!

Ross Whippo is a graduate student at the University of British Colombia interested in the ecology of northeast Pacific subtidal zone. His research explores the connections between seagrass habitat and the surrounding environment. He is looking at the export of seagrass into marine food webs using a combination of biomass surveys and biomarkers to trace energy flow.

Photo by Andrew Huang, http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3795-behold-the-power-of-seagrass

Photo by Andrew Huang, http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3795-behold-the-power-of-seagrass

I like that this project combines classical ecology–actually measuring the biomass of seagrass derived materials moving through ecosystems–and more modern food web studies that use biomarkers to quantify the contribution of seagrass primary production at various trophic levels. Go check out Ross’s project page and consider kicking a little rocket fuel his way.

#SciFund Challenge: Turtles in the Deep

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.

Turtles in the Deep

Lindsey Peavey is a graduate student at the University of California (and formerly from the Duke University Marine Lab) who studies the ecology of large marine vertebrates, including sea turtles. She is currently tracking the foraging behavior of Olive Ridley sea turtles in the open ocean. Funding for this project will go towards covering travel expenses, satellite tracking tags, and supporting research interns.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYa7ABY1ZMQ

As a nice bonus, her home institute will match funding, so your donation will count double. It’s a good enough project that we’ll even forgive her misuse of the term “deep” for “open ocean”, because we can’t all be as poetic as deep-sea biologists. Go check out Lindsey’s project page and pitch in to help a new graduate student get her research off the ground.

#SciFund Challenge: Doctor Zen and the Amazon Crayfish

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.

Doctor Zen and the Amazon Crayfish

Doctor Zen is a biologist who studies brains and behavior using crustaceans. He is studying the invasive marbled crayfish, bizarre species of crayfish that are all female and reproduce asexually. There are no known wild populations, marbled crayfish are only known from the pet trade and invasive populations. Funding for this project will be used to collect slough crayfish, a closely related species, to be used to study the origins of asexual reproduction.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJuUwWTAyRI

You can listen to a fascinating interview with Doctor Zen discussing some of his other research projects – Zen, Zombies, and, Ziplessness. Doctor Zen is also a veteran science blogger and writes at NeuroDojo, Marmorkrebs, and the incredibly valuable Better Posters blog. Head on over to Doctor Zen’s project page and take a look.

#SciFund Challenge: Culture of Climate Change in French Polynesia

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.

Culture of Climate Change in French Polynesia

This pilot study, led by an interdisciplinary team from the University of California and French Polynesia, will send a graduate student to the island of Moorea to interview stakeholders around the island in order to understand how residents understand and experience climate change. They will also produce a map of climate change “hotspots” areas that are exceptionally valuable and exceptionally vulnerable to climate change.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Ngq7yaxzk

I like this project because it involves local researchers in French Polynesia, the support they’re asking for directly contributes to a graduate student’s thesis work, and they clearly have a vision for a much larger project that this will feed into. Go take a look at their project page and consider contributing to a worthy study.

The #SciFund Challenge: Tracking the migration of the Atlantic Puffin

Posted on by Andrew Thaler

#SciFund is a month-and-a-half long initiative to raise funds for a variety of scientific research projects. Project leaders post a project description and an appeal for funds, and members of the public are invited to make small donations to projects that they deem worthy. Donations come with rewards such as access to project logs, images from fieldwork, your name in the acknowledgements of publications, among other possibilities. Many of these projects are marine or conservation themed. Over the next week, we’ll highlight some of our favorites. Please take a look at these projects and, should you so desire, send some financial support their way. If you do make a donation, let them know how you found out about their project and leave a comment (anonymous if you’d like) on this post letting us know.

Tracking the migration of the Atlantic Puffin

Dr. Robin Freeman is a post-doctoral researcher investigating the movement and behaviour of seabirds, including the Atlantic Puffin. Her project tracks the movement of migratory Atlantic puffins and she is interested in determining how stable puffin migratory tracks are over multiple years and what effect climate plays during their journeys. Funding for this project would be used to purchase and deploy tracking devices.

One thing I like to see is that her past research is published open access, so that anyone interested in contributing can dig a little deeper into the science – A Dispersive Migration in the Atlantic Puffin and Its Implications for Migratory Navigation. So go check out Dr. Freeman’s project for yourself and help support marine science.