ScienceOnline09: Nature Blogging
 Kevin Zelnio of Deep-Sea News and Grrrlscientist of Living the Scientific Life |
Grrrlscientist of Living the Scientific Life and Kevin Zelnio of Deep-Sea News co-hosted this session, which I attended and Vicky snuck into. While I don’t consider myself a nature blogger, I do like to cover Take a Child Outside Week, and my flickr sets are much more about using museum specimens to catalogue what you find outside than taking inspiring photos.
A good deal of the session kept returning to the question of “What is Nature Blogging?” as opposed to science blogging. One participant made the insightful observation that Henry David Thoreau was a nature blogger, but not a science blogger. Someone else noted that The Origin of the Species was both scientifically rigorous and filled with natural philosophy.
Richard Carter, answered via Twitter, “Nature Blogs are unlikely to cover the large hadron collider.” To which a commenter replied, “I take that as a challenge.”
Another, related question, was “How much Science should be in Nature Blogs?” Several commenters agreed that including science definitely enhanced their reading experiences, and that nature blogs, because they tend toward a softer scientific emphasis, provide a “Lower barrier to entry” for their readers to understand the science they do bring into the mix. In other words, have fun, but sneak some science into the enchanting photography and emotional experiences.
Nature blogging isn’t a subset of science blogging because it includes people who post photos from their back yard, wondering about what they’ve photographed. Nature blogs, it was raised, are interwoven with advocacy. They bring attention to the myriad conservation efforts going on all around the world, and encourage people to participate in Citizen Science projects like the Audubon Christmas Bird Count.
It was at this point Vicky and I learned about the amazing website iNaturalist.org, where members upload photos of species they photography along with coordinates. The site has fantastic potential for citizen science, and Vicky has all ready signed up and started contributing to it. She sees the site as way to track decimated American Chestnut populations. Vicky has been uploading photos all night to keep up with the California submissions.
I would probably blog more outdoor excursions if I wasn’t so uptight about properly identifying the species I photograph outside. Museums have these convenient labels on everything, while outside is just so incredibly overwhelmingly biodiverse. The world outside is filled with the promise of adventure, overwhelmingly complex and inspiring in a way I find difficult to accurately articulate. I’m thankful for the bloggers out there who are able convey that sense of wonder.
