Citizen Science, Seabirds, and a Changing Climate: Why and How Public Engagement Matters

Recent research highlights how our shifting climate triggers increasingly extreme conditions. In the North Pacific, this involves regime shifts, El Niño-driven events, and marine heatwaves - all spurring bottom-up changes in ecosystem productivity and structure. As long-lived, highly visible top predators, seabirds provide clear indicators of these shifts. Citizen science has emerged as a valuable avenue for public engagement in data collection and research. The Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) has documented changing seabird mortality - capturing shifts in frequency, magnitude, taxonomic breadth, and causality through systematic beached bird surveys. These findings offer compelling evidence of upper trophic responses to a warming climate, while also illustrating how motivated community members can become place-based experts and effective champions for science.

Speaker: Julia Parish, University of Washington