Abstract Summary
The creation of The New York Botanical Garden, an International Plant Research Center at the heart of New York City—and the programs of study that followed since the 1890’s—have helped lay the foundation of ecology as a discipline in America. The Garden now connects an ever larger community of individuals to plants through citizen science programming. Active public involvement by ‘amateur naturalists,’ is ever more essential today to document the planet’s rapidly decreasing biodiversity. What can we learn from past and present approaches to environmental scholarship? Public engagement plays an indispensable role in the democratization of science by involving an increasingly diverse force of global and regional participants in a common effort to advance environmental knowledge and stewardship. The citizen science movement is reflective of wider societal forces and trends of interconnectedness: it encourages the establishment of new communities of activists that find common purpose to rally around local issues that may address broader environmental, legal and humanities concerns. This movement is supported by easily accessible new technologies—from extensive computer networks to cell phones with sophisticated apps, such as iNaturalist which the New York Botanical Garden uses for its EcoQuests; a program challenging New Yorkers to become citizen scientists and sustain nature in the City. Today’s rapidly evolving online social networks sharing observations on plants across the globe benefit Big Data and meta-analyses. Increased plant awareness in the public sphere has important consequences: it helps to mitigate plant blindness and catalyzes much needed further conservation action.
