How Birders are Crowdsourcing Climate Research

Researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have developed a popular app for birders called eBird.  The app allows birders to track and and follow bird sightings, with some birders then traveling to locations of a recent sighting to hopefully catch a glimpse for themself. But the app also eBird also serves an important function for researchers.  As eBird recently logged its 1 billionth bird sighting, it is crowdsourcing massive amounts of data which provides valuable information for researchers who can then better understand the movement of bird populations and what they can tell us about climate change.

We speak with Amanda Rodewald, professor and senior director for Center of Avian Population Studies at Cornell University, about eBird, and what birds can teach us about climate change.

Additional reading: "A Once in-a Lifetime Bird" by Kevin Nguyen for The Verge.