Who Uses GLOBE

Citizen Scientists

Anyone who contributes to GLOBE’s library of environmental data is supporting science as a citizen scientist. Thousands of volunteer citizen scientists who gather and submit measurements using the GLOBE protocols. These data are freely available to be used by students, teachers, researchers and other citizen scientists in their studies on Earth science and our shared environment.

 

How Citizen Scientists Use GLOBE

Citizen scientists primarily interact with GLOBE through the GLOBE Program’s free app, GLOBE Observer. Citizen scientists also participate in data challenges created by NASA, GLOBE, and other scientific and educational institutions.

With the GLOBE Observer app, citizen scientists document and submit data on clouds, mosquito habitats, land cover, trees, and as appropriate, eclipses. Before they begin submitting data, citizen scientists receive brief in-app training for each GLOBE Observer protocol. Additionally, the app guides data collection to ensure accurate and reliable measurements. This ensures that students or scientists using this data can be confident in the results of their projects.

With additional training and equipment beyond the GLOBE Observer app, citizen scientists can collect and submit data for all GLOBE protocols through GLOBE Data Entry.

 

Citizen scientist volunteers can freely access all of GLOBE’s protocol resources, such as educational activities, publications and the data retrieval/visualization systems.
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