The Coastal Almanac project investigated ways to diversify mainstream global change science through the incorporation of, and co-creation of, citizen science and place-based community science programs focused on issues of import to local peoples (communities).  This approach centers around physical and biological phenomena that people depend on for livelihoods and culture, defining an almanac, a concept that is present in all cultures.  In modern times, we envisioned a Coastal Almanac as a broad collection of information - numerical data, maps, text, verbal stories - collected across space and time, and shared according to the laws and norms of the community.  Our project had three intersecting starting points: mainstream science and long-term monitoring of natural processes, Indigenous community science, and citizen science projects involving many people spread across dozens of coastal communities.

The original project examined the feasibility of developing place-based, community-designed programs to catalog local knowledge, as well as ways to link those data repositories to each other and to the broader scientific community and data resident there. We chose to engage in a series of conversations, listening sessions, and workshops to explore “almanac as a fruitful concept,” as well as follow-on issues including: data ownership, sharing and sovereignty; the need for centrality in protocol development; and data harmonization (the likelihood that all data could be blended into single use vehicles, like a searchable database, or a map).

Focal audiences included Pacific Northwest tribal communities, remote coastal communities, and small scale fisheries primarily located in towns (ports) along the coast.  During the project we expanded our audience to include coastal K-16 STEM educators.  Citizen science project directors were included in many discussions and workshops.  In total, the project directly engaged an estimated 1133 individuals (from notes for all presentation, events and meetings):

While the development of an operational Coastal Almanac (i.e. an easily accessed, web-based database of community-based observation) was beyond the scope of our project, there was unanimous interest in the concept of the almanac.  Everyone could see themselves, their work, and community as part of this concept.  Ideas for types of data, both data structure and focal organism or phenomenon, were extremely diverse.  While this is exciting, it also brings up a critical follow-on question: how could a Coastal Almanac be practically effected so that the data could be widely shared, and all members of coastal communities would feel empowered to engage?

Data ownership and data sovereignty were central issues especially in conversations with tribal community members, and secondarily with fishery communities.  Who owns the data, and has the right to (dis)allow its use, is crucial to the successful implementation of a broad-based almanac.  Imposing open science standards, such as the requirement to make data collected under the funding auspices of a grantor, will drive individuals and communities to disengage.

Building an almanac that is useful to coastal communities will require resources well beyond this pilot, and staying power to ensure the almanac is active and serving the public for years if not decades.  It must be built to last, it must be nimble to new data types and sources, and it must be responsive to the needs of the non-mainstream science community - those who do not know R, do not read the peer-reviewed scholarly literature, and yet understand the changes in their local coastal environment more deeply than any professor or professional scientist might.  Easy, visually-based accessibility (e.g., maps, info-graphics) seems central.

Many stakeholders agreed that inclusion of “youngers,” and especially children from their community, was key.  In service of this, we explored what it would take to develop relationships through a network of formal STEM educators.  This avenue has promise for advancing data collection, facilitated by dedicated, trained teachers (e.g., train-the-trainer); may provide teachers with out-of-doors, hands-on learning tied to NGSS standards, and may help to expand the identity of who is “allowed” to do science. 

For partnerships with tribal communities, we identified the crucial importance of “boundary spanners” – individuals with experience and credibility in both mainstream science and the tribal community – for respectful and successful projects. This concept was shared with another NSF-funded (GEO) program: Active Societal Participation In Research and Education (ASPIRE). Through collaboration with ASPIRE, we co-published a paper, and helped structure and provide content for webinar series designed to train geoscientists to engage equitably and deeply with community partners.   The Coastal Almanac PIs also shared their experiences with multiple PIs from INCLUDES and INCLUDES-Alliance projects, providing ideas for incorporation of community-based science in efforts to improve public understanding of science and diversity in STEM. 

Last Modified: 02/08/2022
Modified by: Marco B Hatch