Good afternoon, everybody. Uh, my name is Rebecca Funk. I am the Citizen Science Program Support Specialist with NOAA. Um, we're very excited to be bringing a new opportunity together this year. Um, we are currently working on scheduling and hosting a series of citizen and participatory science, uh, webinars throughout the year. Each month, we're gonna be focusing on a different topic of interest to help support our community science members based off of feedback we've gotten from surveys, as we
ll as questions that we regularly get in our office. Um, so keep your eyes peeled. We're gonna have more events coming every month throughout the rest of the year. We're very excited to kick off this series today with Liz McQuain. Liz serves as a participatory science federal liaison for the National Sea Grant Network. Um, she's currently partnered with the EPA NOAA and USGS to help us with this initiative. She is based out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana with Louisiana Sea Grant. Liz has obtained her
master's in environmental studies from the College of Charleston, and a bachelor's in marine biology from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. During her time in South Carolina, Liz also worked with South Carolina Sea Grant as the extension graduate assistant assisting program specialists along all eight coastal counties. Today, Liz is going to be telling us a little bit about her work and initiative as a federal liaison, and we're very excited to see what's gonna happen. All right, an
d I'm gonna hand it over to Thanks so much, Rebecca. Uh, hello everyone. Thank you for attending. Thank you for being here and listening to me and for your interest in Citizen Community participatory Science. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna share my screen. Hopefully the inception of screens went away and you're seeing my, uh, PowerPoint. Um, and once again, thank you for being here. Uh, my name is Liz McQuain. I use she her pronouns. And I am at Louisiana Sea Grant, uh, based in Baton Rouge, L
ouisiana on LSU campus. And I am the participatory Science Federal Liaison for the National Sea Grant Network. This is a part of the Federal Partnership Program with the National Sea Grant Office, and there are about nine of us liaisons, and we all have different topic areas and geographic scopes. Mine is participatory science focused on water resources, and I have a national scope. So that's all 38, uh, C grant programs. And so today I will be talking with you guys about this position. Um, this
projects that we're doing, um, what we're hoping will achieve what I have already achieved, and, um, hopefully get some of you guys that might not work in participatory science. Excited about the topic. So, a little bit of background. I'm gonna do a very high level overview just because I don't know what everyone's familiarity is. But, um, something that's fun to think about is that participatory science or the public's participation in the scientific process is extremely old. Maybe not as old
as time, but it's pretty old. Um, at least thousands of years old before we had the formalized, um, scientific process that we know today and follow, um, specific protocols, um, and, uh, how we have it formalized in agencies, university, and research levels. So this is something, um, that's fun to think about back, uh, when there were no universities, how did they figure out where to plant crops, um, where, um, areas were flooding based on the time of the year. So this was a way of thinking and
solving problems for the betterment of the community, um, without that formalized scientific method that we have and use today. And over time, as this has been used, it's been recognized as a valuable way to either gather information and use that information to solve any issues. So in 2017, the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act was, um, put forth as federal support for citizen science, public participation in the scientific process, uh, recognizing that as a valuable source of information, a
nd then giving that support and spreading the use. Um, nationally, and as you may have noticed, a few different terms have been thrown around citizen community, participatory. What term do I use? Well, to make it even more complicated, there are even more terms. There's co-collaboration, co-production, collaborative research, volunteer monitoring, uh, collaborative fisheries. There are lots of different terms to use. And to start that conversation, we would open up a can of worms. That can be a
whole webinar in and of itself. There are papers out discussing this. Um, and for this purpose, we at SEA Grant have determined that participatory science most accurately depicts what we do. So, participatory science is a wider range of programs, projects, initiatives. Um, typically citizen science is the top down approach where either an institution, agency organization comes into an area, utilizes volunteers and participants to collect data, then uses that information for whatever the purpose
was from that institution. Community science on the inverse is more bottom up. So it's more of a grassroots effort. There is a problem in an area, maybe the water has a funky smell or looks different, or there's a lot of marine debris coming in. So it's the community coming around figuring out what that problem is, what's causing that problem, and using that information to help come to a solution. Maybe, um, something hasn't been addressed for capacity issues or resource issues. Um, but particip
atory science kind of covers the broad spectrum of that. Different levels of participant participation from participants. A lot of PS going on, so excuse me if I stumble over that a little bit. I know I'm not the only one, so I feel solace in that. Um, but I will be using participatory science or ps, um, as an acronym or participant collected data as a term. So the three agencies I'm partnered with, YEPA, NOAA, and USGS. Well, all three of these agencies already have programs that are ongoing of
a participatory science nature, whether they call it participatory science, community science, or citizen science. Um, both EPA and NOAA have released their strategic plans and visions, uh, last year. And USGS is currently in the process of formalizing that. Um, each program also has some sort of long-term programming associated with a participatory science type of program. Um, and typically you think that leads to lessons learned. You know, over time as you're doing things, you gain wisdom, yo
u learn from mistakes and well, sometimes that works out, uh, not always, but, um, there is a wealth of knowledge at each of these agencies. There's staff support, dedicated staff to participatory science efforts. Um, majority of them are on my steering committee for this project, um, or position. And so along with that tends to happen or tends to have funding opportunities. Um, EPA has a lot of funding opportunities for environmental justice work and community coalition work, um, as well as Noa
h having o uh, funding opportunities, um, in USGS mainly with specific research projects, um, gaining funding for their participatory work. Um, there is data management opportunities, mainly with the water quality portal. Um, USGS and EPA jointly run the water quality portal. And so having a data management, um, opportunity, the expertise in how to get citizen science or participant collected data onto that platform, um, is super important and crucial, and something that we're working towards. A
nd spoiler alert, I'll talk on that a little bit later. And resources. All of these agencies have tons of resources already. Tons of training, um, quality assurance, project plan guidance, um, loan, um, equipment programs. There's just a wealth of knowledge. So it became obvious that these three agencies would be great to partner together to find the nexus of where we can all work together, work towards a common goal, and, um, produce some really great work. So we're to see Grant fit into all of
this. So, um, SEA Grant and National Sea Grant has four focus areas. And during the 2018 visioning, it was found that at the time we were using Citizen science. Um, now using participatory science is cross cutting in all four of these focus areas. Um, with over 80 programs at that time, I believe we're at the same amount, same number of programs, almost to 90. Were, um, in a ground truthing era of finding out what programs are still existing, updating information, all of that. Um, there are so
many programs that SEA Grant does across our 38, um, SEA grant college programs that can focus on maybe one of these focus areas. More of them focus on multiple of these focus areas, about half cover two, um, because they go hand in hand, right? Um, they aren't mutually exclusive. And so it's natural that, um, our participatory science program is cross-cutting, because if it's at the K 12 level, um, it's seen more in environmental literacy, workforce development, but it's covering coastal resili
ence. So it gets at that resilience communities and economies. Um, so that's how we fit into it. And as well, we provide great information because we're place-based, um, typically seen as the connection between the communities, the university, and the federal level. Um, sea grant programs are typically half state, half federally funded, so we have that connection. Um, most extension agents are in their communities, in their counties or parishes. And so we're able to interact with the community,
see what the priorities are, connect with the federal resources, so we're able to provide important information to the federal agencies that I'm partnered with of what's needed more on the community and the, the ground level. So what are the goals of this partnership? I'm gonna talk, um, there are three goals. They are not in any particular order, it's just for ease of communication of them. And then I'll talk a little bit about, just a little bit about why they're important. So, goal number one
is to enhance diversity of participation. So participatory science better represents communities, and this is more focused on underrepresented underserved, under-resourced communities that could really benefit from the, the merging of the top down and the bottom up approaches. So solution-based, uh, participatory science programs, and that can increase stem literacy connection with the surrounding environment and community building. It's a way to bring people together for a common cause, which
is a community that they live in. Um, while introducing, um, scientific methods, um, being involved in decision making and being a part of the process of deciding what the solutions are for your community, which is so empowering and really brings ownership to where you live and pride. And, um, if it's done and involved with the K 12 level level at the education, um, initiatives, then that can really inspire some folks to go maybe into a field that they didn't think was an option or didn't know e
xisted. Um, so that's exciting to think about. Goal number two, assessing the agency assets, recommending any standardized or best practices, provide training and establish a way towards the data commons. So this is to reduce, um, duplicate efforts. So a lot of the times, we'll, programs will get started. And just as an example, they may be doing a marine debris program, and there's already so many apps, best practices, um, quality assurance project plans for marine debris, marine debris program
s, but maybe they wanna have their own app 'cause it's just a little bit different. And so, um, finding what works best and what can be built upon and specialized and, um, made specific for maybe a state, um, maybe within the state, different, there's a couple different coastlines and there's not a one fits all, but what is that base level? What can we standardize? And then each program can build off of, um, so that we can have large scale comparisons. So luckily some national programs, um, ther
e isn't duplicative efforts. Um, so they are able to have these nationwide comparisons if that's applicable to what they're doing. Um, but when there's so many people doing just a little bit different, um, that makes it harder. So this is an opportunity to get to a point where, um, we can pull information together and, um, so that we can have some really cool, I I'm a a little bit of a map nerd, so we can really have cool maps, um, uh, thematic maps, um, telling a story storytelling is so effect
ive, um, with, with participatory science. And goal three is working more towards data acceptance and extending the use of participatory science data. So that's ensuring that it's quality data being used, um, and that it is able to be used in decision making and enabling communities participants to feel like what they're doing is worthwhile because it is gonna be used. And that can extend geographical reach of agencies or researchers because with standardized methods, with, um, specific protocol
s in place and data management, then that can ensure the quality of the data and might not necessarily mean that there has to be someone in every little niche, um, that they can trust the programs and the participants to collect that data and they can trust that data to be used. Um, and so we can gather more data and that can also empower historically underserved communities, um, that they have the tools in place, they have the protocols and, um, are able to be trained to collect data for themse
lves, um, which is super important for, um, something that we have learned about through some of the research already, which is a distrust, um, and the historically seen as the top down approach, which can be very exploitive of coming in, taking the data and running off with it. So a little bit about what I've done so far. It's a four year grant funded program, and the first year is really network building. I have 38 C grant programs that I serve, as well as three federal agencies. So that's a l
ot of people to meet a lot of faces, um, to meet over Zoom and luckily in person, uh, a lot of each reductions over email. And so really getting the lay of the land, who are the players? Who do I need to talk to, um, and building those connections. So if someone contacts me and says, Hmm, I, I really wanna, uh, measure phytoplankton, I'm not really, I don't really know who to talk to. I can be like, Hey, I know, I know a guy at Noah who runs the phytoplankton monitoring network. I can put you in
touch with him or, and he, I can reach out to him and see if there's anyone regionally that I can put you in touch with. So I can be that liaison for people looking for answers, but I can also be someone that's, uh, tuned into all these networks, finding out what's going on. And I can share that information out broadly as well. I've done multiple presentations and posters both on this position and on Participatory Science at Sea Grant. Uh, so focusing more on what we're doing at the SEA Grant l
evel. But I've also presented on, um, this position and the importance of, um, the goals that we have set out. And I've also presented on the diversifying particip participation survey summary, um, that I'll talk about in a little bit bit. But, um, one of the major lifts kind of in that first year and a half was we launched our C grant, participatory science website. Um, it was something that was developed and then kind of, uh, put on the back burner and we finally got that up and running. I'll
have a link to that at the end, so you can check that out yourself. But it lists all of our programs. And we also have, um, a list of resources. We're in the middle of revamping that with our name change from Community Science to participatory science. Um, we're going through and editing all of that text, but we're also wanting to revamp that resource area to be a catchall for all the resources that I've compiled so far, so that, um, anyone can be directed to that. And it's just a library of res
ources. Um, but one of the major things that I've been able to do with my co-collaborate, Chris Stepak, who's at Lake Stand, lake Champlain Sea Grant in Vermont, is, um, serving my federal partners and SEA grant folks about the diversifying of participation within their, um, community and participatory science programs. So we conducted the survey and have been able to produce a survey summary, which is about a 10 page document, which you can access from this bit ly it is case sensitive. So that
is a capital DEI. Um, and so we were able to identify best practices where major challenges were and identify, uh, ways forward to address those challenges based on success stories and also based on literature, um, that expresses best practices. And then we were also able to find examples, which is crucial, right? The storytelling aspect and providing examples is how we learn. And a lot of the times how we convey, um, what's gone well or maybe a challenge that we faced and overcome it. Um, story
telling is very compelling, right? So we're gonna split up our, um, our major survey summary, which is about 10 pages into shorter fact sheets that are topic focused. And we're gonna provide examples specifically from the survey to, um, to really help, uh, bolster up what successes have happened. Um, there are success stories out there that just need to be shared and also identify challenges that we're seeing over and over again, not just in our survey, but also anecdotal through conversations a
nd also in the literature. Um, it's important to, um, have a place to reference that so that, um, other folks as they're going along, maybe they're just doing a quick Google search of I'm facing this, um, how do I address it? Um, there's a way to see that other people have faced those challenges before and maybe be able to get in touch with them and, and see a way to move forward. And so with that, we've provided training. We've gone on a quote unquote road show. Um, we've provided this training
about four times, and we have another one this summer at the A GU Water Science Conference in June in St. Paul, Minnesota. Um, so if any of you're there and wanna attend, love to see you. Um, and so we've been able to, uh, help people work through some of the problems they've been facing. Um, and we have a little worksheet that's also in that, um, the Bitly that's a Google drive, and where we'll be putting all these resources as we're creating them and as we find them, um, and link to other res
ource libraries as well, and resource sharing, uh, links. But it's, it's been a great process of having people think through what they're wanting to do to diversify participation, the players involved, and, um, what challenges they either have seen or anticipate seeing. So you can think of those questions beforehand and you can think through the time that it's gonna take, um, because it's not something that happens overnight. There are also some great insights in there. So, um, happy to answer q
uestions on that later. Don't wanna spend too much, uh, time on that. But something else, um, that I think is really great that's come out of this is an informal network of accountability. So we found that there's a lot of people doing this work of diversifying participation or wanting to get involved in diversifying participation, but don't necessarily know where to start. Um, may not be as far along as they wish in their education of what that means. So we've started this informal network of f
olks that have attended those trainings. Um, we meet every other month and we're able to discuss what's going on. Um, after each meeting, the goal is to have something, a short, um, to do or action item that is to reach their long-term goal of diversifying participation. So they have about two months to address it. And so in that meeting, we can talk freely about any challenges faced. Uh, it's a way to share experience and knowledge because we have folks in a, a variety of, um, places in their c
areer, also topic area and, uh, geographic reach as well. So it's just a chance to meet and talk and hold yourself accountable for actually putting forth the effort and doing that action item. You have to come back and report on what you've done. So that's something that's really cool. It's like a support system, accountability, um, very informal, very casual. Um, but that's something that's great that's come out of this. So looking forward, um, about halfway through this position, uh, what's it
gonna look like moving forward? It's a word that all of us know, all of us know well, and we always need more of data. Um, we're really gonna focus on, uh, the data aspect of this project. In the beginning we've worked on the diversity, equity, inclusion, justice as accessibility side of it, um, really doing that, um, having our focus on that while we have the, the initiative. And so we're gonna continue that throughout the rest of this program, but we're gonna move more towards that data quali
ty and data management side of, um, what are some standardized practices? Um, what's that baseline that we can create, people can build off of moving forward? Um, what's needed for PAR participant collected data to be included in the water quality portal? Um, what kind of metadata is needed? Uh, what's an API, because you know, I hear it all the time and someone has told me, I don't really know, but I know that's how like computer programs talk to each other, answering those types of questions.
Um, and also we, um, we actually, my steering committee and I just met a couple weeks ago and we're thinking through a flow chart of, so you wanna get started in participatory science. You, um, how do I do that clicking through and then having abundance of resources that are available at the end, um, or I'm a practitioner, but I'm looking to better my data management clicking through, answer these questions. Here are the list of resources. So we already have multiple spreadsheets just littered w
ith, uh, resources if you will. But really coalescing those, uh, labeling them category, categorizing them, um, and figuring out how they fit together for different stages and maybe different questions. It's a bit undertaking, but I think it's something that we're all really excited about, and the usability of that in the future I think is, is really great. And so, um, things like the quality assurance and quality control guidelines from the EPA, um, a lot of best practices from NOAH programs, u
h, like long running programs like Cocoa Ross and the Phytoplankton Monitoring Network and the Hudson, um, e monitoring network. A lot of great, um, stories to tell and resources to be used from those programs, um, that are successes and lessons learned. And then from USGS, um, a lot of working with indigenous populations like the Indigenous Observation Network, um, also in Grand Canyon, uh, working with K 12 on River cruises. Um, and then also having that gold standard of data that USGS has. Wh
enever we think of great data, we think of USGS. And so, um, what they've been able to do throughout their tenure of pro producing great data, how do we apply that to participatory science and what needs to be done? Um, if the purpose of that data is to be used in decision making, that's not always the case. Um, so I've, I've been mainly speaking on those types of programs. Um, but you know, most of us are scientists are scientifically trained, so we always think of why, why, why this, why now?
Um, and so I kind of wanna leave that as an open-ended thought for y'all and, um, for anyone that will be watching this in the future. And it's something that I always am reminding myself of, why are we doing this? And it's because there's so much that can be done. So many people that can be brought into this wonderful world of water resources because we are surrounded by water. And I can go on like a passionate rant of, you know, I love water, clearly this is what I'm working in. Um, but um, I
always like to end with the why. We always wanna think of the why are we doing this? And it's protecting our water resources. Um, it's educating our youth, it's engaging our neighbors. And, um, it's building together a community that is gonna work towards, um, not only saving our water resources, but maintaining them and learning about them and living with them. So thank you again for listening to my spiel. Um, hopefully I didn't stumble over participatory too much. I really have been working on
it. I should have done some vocal exercises before. Um, but if you are in the, the Gulf region and you wanna see me in person, I'm at the Sea Grant building at on Ls, U'S campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I have my email up here. Feel free to contact me with any questions or connect through email. Happy to talk always. And I have the link here, the bit ly for our C grant participatory science website as we're doing these updates. Um, we'll be sending out as we're updating them, um, and we'll be
able to highlight in April Citizen Science Month, um, some really cool projects and cool programs that we do at Sea Grant, as well as great resources for my three partner agencies. And I wanna thank Rebecca, um, for inviting me to do this and allowing me to kick this off. I hope I did it justice to getting everyone's interest peaked in participatory science. And I thank you Shannon and Katie for your logistics support and everything that you guys have been doing on the backend running webinars.
No joke. Um, but yeah, that's it for me. So I hope there's, um, some questions. Thank you so much. Let's move into our questions. Um, so let's get everyone on the screen. We added, we'll add all ourselves to the screen and I'll take off that, um, take off that lovely, oh, there we go. Okay, so I don't see any questions yet coming in, but if you have a question, the question panel should be right underneath your or next to your chat panel. Um, but I, because uh, there aren't questions yet, I'm g
onna turn to Rebecca and she's gonna let you know that there is another one in this Citizen Science series coming up. Absolutely. Thank you. First of all, thank you so much, Liz. That was super informative. I'm really excited to see the things coming out of your collaboration with these different agencies. So thank you. Um, as Katie mentioned, we are very excited to keep this series going. Um, our next, uh, addition of the citizen science participatory science. Now I'm struggling with that word.
Webinar is going to be on March 27th. Um, Hillary Berges is going to be presenting on some of her work with the Marine Debris program as well as Shoreline surveys. So it's going to be a pretty interesting session. We're very excited to be hosting her and she is making some great accommodations for us because she's on the West Coast. So that time difference is no joke, but we're very excited for that. And then we also have a few, um, informative and fun sessions coming up in April for Citizen Sc
ience month. Thank you. Rebecca, I still don't see questions. So, um, Rebecca, did you have a question? Or Liz, is there something you didn't share, um, that you, you have a little bit of time now and you'd like to mention? I'm not sure I have a question. Yeah, you could ask. Well, my brain's stopped like going through the autopilot. Yeah. So since you do, you are in a unique situation where you get to collaborate with so many different agencies. Um, I was wondering if there's any projects or ex
amples in particular that, um, from the different agencies or programs that have really sparked your interest in participatory science. Yeah, so one that I think is amazing in what they do, and when I got to speak to the program manager, I was honestly asking him a ton of questions. It's Steve Martin with the NOAA Phytoplankton Monitoring Network. They were able to have standardized practices and expand nationally. And normally when you hear that, you're like, what? Really? And he is like, yeah,
people are interested in it. We find the money, we find the funding, um, if we can't do it, we help them find the funding to help that they can apply for, to get the equipment. And we have our set protocol, we train them, we check in, and it's amazing to hear folks that are excited to be doing volunteer participation in scientific programs and continue to do it. Um, something else is the EPA Urban Waters program. Um, there are designated urban waters areas and I think to me, having lived in a f
ew cities, I've lived on the coast for the past eight years. This is the furthest I've lived from the coast, which Louisiana is like, southern Louisiana is like, it's practically all coast, but like I'm closest to a river, not really the beach. Um, and that almost lack of access to the beach. I never under, I, I guess I did understand it, but it's not until you live it of, oh yes, I'm so far. Of course people aren't worried about like beach erosion if you're living like two hours inland or, you
know, whatever it may be. Um, so having that opportunity to engage with people that live in what's designated as an urban area or a city sprawl or something like that, and getting them connected with water resources and how they are still connected. Um, and having programming I think is so under, not undervalued, but underutilized maybe in some ways. 'cause I come from a very rural area and in North Carolina, and so I, sure I saw the beach when we got to go maybe like once a, maybe once a year.
'cause it was about four hours away if, you know, if we could do that. But in my small town, when I said I wanted to do marine biology, they were like, what? Why do you like dolphins? And I was like, well, yes I do, but you know, that's just not something that you're thinking of your connectivity with water when you're that far inland. Um, and you're not very close to, we weren't very close to rivers or lakes and that's not something that we did grow up. Um, so I think that's a really great prog
ram of, of connecting people with water resources and how, um, you know, through the ground, everything is connected. That was an awesome question, Rebecca and answer list. Thank you. I am still not seeing questions, so we must have answered all of them during your presentation. I Guess I just, you know, do it all. I that can't be true. It, they've gotta be in like, oh gosh, what did she just say? I'll think of the question and email her later. Yep. If they'd like to email you later, they should
do that. Also, uh, since we did record this, you can find it on the library's YouTube, uh, will be on the library, so YouTube page shortly. Um, and so you will be able to see it there. There will be, uh, an email that will be, uh, sent to you after I close this webinar here and it has a little bit of a, uh, a survey link in there and a link to our YouTube page to watch this, uh, later. So share it with your colleagues. Liz, thank you so much Rebecca. We're excited to get this series kicked off
and I'm gonna end it early, give everybody some time back in their day. Thank you so much for joining us.
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