Additional Opportunities

Here are some broader, regional to international platforms where community members can contribute to biomonitoring and community science. These platforms are easy for you to use, and using them makes you a potential contributor to an enormous amount of formal research. eBird data has fuelled at least 1100 publications, and those are just the ones tracked by eBird. Similarly, iNaturalist has fueled some 4000 publications

• BC Nature (https://www.bcinat.com/): A provincial umbrella organization for naturalist clubs; members can participate in surveys, field trips, and species at risk monitoring across the Sunshine Coast.
• eBird – Sunshine Coast (https://ebird.org/region/CA-BC-SC): A global bird observation platform that allows users to submit bird sightings specific to the Sunshine Coast region, contributing to long-term population and distribution data.
• iNaturalist – Sunshine Coast (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-the-sunshine-coast-bc-canada and https://www.inaturalist.org/places/sunshine-coast): A community science platform where users can upload photos of plants, animals, fungi (anything with DNA) observed on the Sunshine Coast; observations help document local biodiversity and are often used by researchers and conservation groups.
• Birds Canada (https://www.birdscanada.org/you-can-help/citizen-science): Birds Canada offers diverse volunteer community science opportunities. These range from monitoring nest success and counting birds in winter to surveying nocturnal species and mapping breeding populations.