This article first appeared in Sightline, an annual newsletter that addresses critical environmental and resource issues in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The publication is sponsored by Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Great Smoky Mountains Association and was written and produced by the University of Tennessee’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center.

The Energy, Environment and Resources Center at the University of Tennessee is one of the nation’s oldest university-based multidisciplinary research units devoted to environmental issues. The center finds real-world solutions to problems related to the environment, energy, economic development, and technology. Visit the EERC Web site at eerc.ra.utk.edu.

The full Sightline publication can be accessed at http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/Sightline.html.

After arriving in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in summer of 2004, new Superintendent Dale Ditmanson says that one of the first things he noticed was how much people in this region love their Park and are committed to conserving and studying it.

A growing number of people are demonstrating their affection for the Park by volunteering as citizen scientists. Several Park programs are recruiting and training volunteers from neighboring communities to provide significant help to both in-house park researchers and visiting university scientists. Meanwhile, elementary, high school, and college students gather data and cover more area in the Park than scientists have time to visit. Careful supervision and programming ensure that the data these citizen scientists collect is accurate and valuable.

One of the hotspots of citizen science in the park is the Appalachian Highlands Science Learning Center at Purchase Knob, located in the Haywood County portion of the park on the Cataloochee Divide.

One of the projects is an ozone-monitoring garden, which contains cut-leaf coneflower, crownbeard and tall milkweed. Damage to the leaves of these plants can be correlated with ozone concentrations monitored in the Park. Susan Sachs, education coordinator for Purchase Knob, trains teachers and students to identify and record the leaf damage and then sends the kids back to their school gardens with cuttings from the plants.

“Right now there are 36 schools throughout Tennessee and North Carolina that are growing ozone monitoring gardens on their school grounds,” said Sachs.

Students compare how their plants are doing against the plants at Purchase Knob — revealing so far that ozone damage to plants is occurring mostly at the higher elevations such as Purchase Knob at 5,000 feet.

Data from the school gardens and from the Purchase Knob site are collected on an ozone Web site www.handsontheland.org/ monitoring/projects/ozone/ozone_bio_search.cfm. Another garden at the Cradle of Forestry in the Pisgah National Forest www.cradleofforestry/cradle_of_forestry /educators_students.asp adds further comparisons.

In another project taking place inside the laboratory at Purchase Knob, students sort fruit flies, beetles, wasps, moths, and butterflies. These specimens are separated into biological orders and sent to the All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory scientists studying each group.

Some student groups collect data on lichen coverage on trees at Purchase Knob — a long-term monitoring project. Students will compare their lichen observations with those logged by previous groups to detect trends or changes.

As part of other special projects adopted by area schools, Waynesville Middle School students collect and identify snails while monitoring soil health, Tuscola High School students monitor water quality and salamander populations, and Cherokee High School classes assist with a spider inventory — to date, the students have collected 18 species of spiders that are new site records.

Students aren’t the only ones contributing to scientific research at Purchase Knob. The Asheville Mushroom Club, with the help of mycologists from Appalachian State University and Eastern Illinois University, conducts regular fungi monitoring around Purchase Knob.

The club works with 52 easily recognizable species, from Jack-o-Lantern to Destroying Angel, and is preparing a booklet with identification and mapping. Meanwhile, adult and family volunteers work directly with ATBI by sorting collections, adopting collection plots, participating in the ATBI blitzes and quests, providing housing or office help, raising funds, and promoting the project. Discover Life in America, the nonprofit organization that manages the ATBI project, conducts several training programs every year so that more people will get involved and collect useful scientific data.

Valuable Data Collection

On the Tennessee side of the Park, the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is one of the primary outposts for training citizen-scientist volunteers.

“Our educational programs had always been experiential, but our citizen science program goes beyond that by having an outcome in terms of real data collection,” says Michelle Prysby, citizen-science director for Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. The programs also educate the public about the value of GSMNP resources and increase public understanding and appreciation for the Park.

“We involve people of all ages in citizen science projects,” says Prysby. “Students with school groups help with projects that tie into their lessons. For example, a lesson on stream ecology might include some data collection for our salamander project, or a ‘Little Creatures’ lesson might include identifying moths for our moth inventory and monitoring study.”

Groups of student volunteers adopt streams and monitor them year-round for salamander populations. High School Field Ecology Adventure Camps impart lessons on the Smokies’ natural environment and the methods scientists use to collect specimens and study the Park’s plants, animals, and geology. And this past year, the Fall Naturalist Programs helped the ATBI project by collecting and identifying fungi in the Tremont area.

Bird research also gets a boost from citizen scientists.

A project called MAPS — or Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship — is a national program launched by the Institute for Bird Populations in 1989 to assess and monitor the vital rates and population dynamics of over 120 species of North American land birds. At two stations in the park, researchers, students, and volunteers capture birds in mist nets and collect data on them.

Prysby said that the park staff enjoys the synergy that results when visiting scientists use students to help them with their work. Last summer, for instance, the Park hosted a research team from Lee University that studies Eastern Hellbenders, the largest salamander species in North America. Ultimately, the Lee University researchers worked closely with students attending summer camp in the park.