Getting outside is often touted as a way to disconnect from smartphones and other screens — but a new citizen-science initiative in Montana hopes to get people and their phones outdoors with the goal of helping reforestation.
Adventure Scientists, a 14-year-old nonprofit based in Bozeman, is training volunteers to scout for conifer seed cones from five species on seven western Montana national forests. It’s part of the group’s second Western U.S. Reforestation Project, which also includes six tree species on eight forests in California.
All volunteers need is a smartphone on which they can download Adventure Scientists’ free app. Training on seed cone identification and reporting is provided through the app. Volunteers can also see which geographic grids in the project need data. Then they go outside and start looking.
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A citizen-science volunteer logs a seed cone as part of Adventure Scientists’ Western U.S. Reforestation Project.
Alison Ormsby is the associate director of design and the forest specialist for Adventure Scientists. She holds a doctorate in environmental studies, was a professor for 20 years and has conducted research on forests around the globe.
“You don’t need any previous skills,” she said. “You don’t need to know how to ID the cones — we’ll teach you how.”
In Montana, volunteers are looking for seed cones from Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce, ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, and western larch trees. The project includes the Lolo, Bitterroot, Flathead, Kootenai, Helena-Lewis & Clark, Beaverhead-Deerlodge, and Custer-Gallatin national forests.
The project kicked off June 5 and runs through Aug. 31. Volunteers can sign up anytime at adventurescientists.org/reforestation-western-us-application.html.
The Western U.S. Reforestation Project, Ormsby said, is a collaboration between Adventure Scientists and Mast Reforestation. Volunteers find and report seed cones, which Mast then collects and grows in a nursery to provide for reforestation efforts like post-fire reforestation by the U.S. Forest Service.
“There definitely is a seed shortage,” she said, naming the species the project is targeting. “Those are the ones that are the native species that are good for replanting.”
“Forests in the Western U.S. are being devastated by wildfires, climate change and other factors, diminishing their ability to regenerate,” Adventure Scientists stated in announcing this year’s seed cone project. “The U.S. Forest Service is only able to re-plant approximately 20% of national forest lands that need reforestation. One of the challenges to regeneration is the ability to establish seedlings and saplings. Volunteers’ images and survey data will help direct reforestation experts to collect seeds from cones and grow seedlings that will aid in reforestation.”
This volunteer effort — like others the nonprofit conducts in the arenas of forests, freshwater, biodiversity, and climate — targets projects that need “big data at scale” for a partner organization, Ormsby said, in this case Mast.
More than 100 people participated in the project last year, according to Adventure Scientists. And 150 people have signed up to participate this year: 57 in Montana and 93 in California.
“We want a lot more,” Ormsby said. “We’d like to get to about 1,000, at least 1,000.”
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