U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Fact Sheet 2015–3070

October 2015

myScience—Engaging the Public 

in U.S. Geological Survey Science

ISSN 2327-6916 (print) ISSN 2327-6932 (online)

http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/fs20153070

myScience: Connecting People, Promoting 

Engagement

myScience (http://txpub.usgs.gov/myscience/) is a Web 

application developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 

Texas Water Science Center through a partnership with the 

USGS Community for Data Integration to address the need for 

increasing public awareness and participation in existing USGS 

citizen science projects. The myScience application contains data 

for 20 projects available for public participation representing all 

USGS mission areas. A visitor to the USGS education Web site 

(http://education.usgs.gov/) can click on the Citizen Science link 

to search for citizen science projects by topic or location, select 

a project of interest, and click “Get Involved.” Within the USGS, 

an internal version of myScience serves to build a community 

of practice and knowledge sharing among scientists who lead or 

would like to lead a crowdsourcing project.

A broad set of research topics are positively affected by 

engaging the public in USGS science through the myScience 

application, from biodiversity and landslides to water and 

mapping. An example of a research topic benefitting from 

the participation of citizen volunteers pertains to the growing 

problem of invasive species, which are “nonindigenous” or not 

native to a particular area and capable of harming that area. 

Nonindigenous species often spread rapidly in new environments 

where their natural predators and other controls found in their 

original habitats are missing, often resulting in precipitous 

declines of native species and large economic and human 

health costs (Reed and Walters, 2015; U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

Service, 2015). The Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Online 

Sighting Report System is a project that is part of the myScience 

application and allows citizen volunteers to participate in 

tracking the spread of invasive aquatic species. By documenting 

aquatic species that are nonindigenous to the United States, 

citizen volunteers are helping to populate a central repository 

of spatially referenced and verified occurrences of such species 

through the project search portal on the myScience Web page. 

Databases specific to different invasive aquatic species are being 

populated, such as the sighting database for the highly invasive 

Dreissena polymorpha (zebra mussel), which has spread to 

several lakes in north Texas since the first confirmed sighting of 

zebra mussels in the State in 2009 (Churchill and Baldys, 2012).

Citizen Volunteers and U.S. Geological Survey 

Science: Overview and Benefits 

Citizen volunteers first participated in data-collection 

programs of the USGS more than 120 years ago and continue to 

make valuable contributions to a wide range of scientific topics. 

For example, citizen volunteers documented streamflow-gage 

height as far back as the late 1800s. Citizen volunteers from the 

North American Bird Phenology Program produced 6 million 

hard copy records (paper cards) documenting bird sightings 

from 1880 to 1970, and as of August 2015, a worldwide, 

crowdsourced network of volunteers has transcribed more than 

1 million of these paper cards. 

The use of paper cards by citizen volunteers and 

professional scientists to record observations of plants and 

animals and other types of environmental data has largely been 

supplanted by programs such as Nature’s Notebook, an online 

plant and animal phenology monitoring program that partners 

with many private organizations and Federal agencies including 

the USGS (National Phenology Network, 2015). Since 2009 

when the Nature’s Notebook Web site for collecting data was 

launched, active observers have contributed approximately 

5 million records at more than 15,000 sites across the Nation, 
helping generate long-term datasets for use in scientific studies. 

Compared to observation networks populated with data 

compiled during traditional scientific studies done by either a 

single scientist or small group of scientists, citizen science and 

crowdsourcing efforts enable a higher resolution observation 

network reaching more areas over longer time periods while 

lowering costs and promoting science, technology, and math 

education.

To learn more about the myScience citizen science project 

application and explore opportunities for participating in USGS 

scientific research, visit http://txpub.usgs.gov/myscience/.

References

Churchill, C.J., and Baldys, Stanley III, 2012, USGS zebra 

mussel monitoring program for north Texas: U.S. Geological 

Survey Fact Sheet 2012–3077, accessed August 18, 2015, at 

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2012/3077/. 

National Phenology Network, 2015, Data dashboard: Accessed 

August 19, 2015, at https://www.usanpn.org/data/dashboard.

For additional information contact: 

Director, Texas Water Science Center 

U.S. Geological Survey 

1505 Ferguson Lane 

Austin, Texas 78754–4501 

http://tx.usgs.gov/

Publishing support provided by

Lafayette Publishing Service Center

Reed, R.N., and Walters, K.D., 2015, Research and management 

tools for controlling invasive species: U.S. Geological Survey 

Fact Sheet 2014–3076, accessed September 9, 2015, at 

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2014/3076/pdf/fs2014-3076.pdf.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2015, Invasive Species—

Frequently asked questions about invasive species: Accessed 

September 6, 2015, at http://www.fws.gov/invasives/faq.html.

—Sally Holl