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7A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MARCH 5, 2018 Science: ‘It’s intrinsically valuable for our volunteers’ Continued from Page 1A “This work needs to be done, but there’s just not enough capacity,” he said. “If we weren’t here? It wouldn’t happen. This data wouldn’t be taken.” A growing trend Citizen science is nothing new. The Audubon Society’s Christmas Day Bird Count has existed for almost 120 years, and for centuries natural obser- vations have been recorded in resources like farmers almanacs. Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist with the University of Washington and founder of the COASST survey, gives presentations about citizen sci- ence around the country and has seen it spike in popularity, particularly in the last decade. Parrish started the group nearly 20 years ago while studying a colony of common murres on Tatoosh Island off the Wash- ington coast. She wanted to know if the reproduction and die-off pat- terns she was seeing were applicable to the entire spe- cies. But in order to know she would need data collected on more than one beach at a time. “When you do that kind of research, you get a lot of infor- mation about one colony,” Parrish said. “But it’s hard to understand whether that one place is indicative of the whole range of the population, or if we are just seeing something that’s going on right there.” When Parrish launched a pilot citizen science proj- ect near Ocean Shores, Wash- ington, she never thought she would get enough volunteers willing to do the work. Now, there are more than 1,000 active in the program. “It’s hard to imagine more than 50 people at one time wanting to go sample dead birds on a beach,” she laughed. “But I was wrong, Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian Eric Owen searches the beach for dead birds near Haystack Rock. which is great.” Part of the rise has to do with technology, she said. Apps that help identify spe- cies and allow unprecedented access to information have driven interest up and removed barriers that would have other- wise made it harder to collect data without formal training. Another is the science commu- nity slowly coming around to accept citizen science. “I think there’s a lot of ret- icence in the science commu- nity to use citizen science. There’s some doubt the data collected is of the precision or accuracy that is needed to doc- ument phenomena,” Parrish said. “But as it grows, the more standardized it becomes. What we’re seeing right now is a lot of discussion in citizen science programs asking what they need to do to get to that level.” But a larger part, she said, is a growing passion in locals to study and protect their own communities that other- wise would not have regular research conducted. “Haystack Rock Awareness Program is a fabulous example of local people saying ‘Hey, this is our place. We want to collect the data, we want to know what’s going on,’” Par- rish said. ‘A marriage contract’ While a general decline in federal funding for scien- tific research could play a fac- tor in the science commu- nity’s acceptance of using volunteer-collected data, Par- rish said, regardless of fund- ing, there are some projects only citizen scientists can accomplish. An example was identify- ing the correlation between massive seabird die-offs and “the Blob,” a large mass of relatively warm water in the Pacific Ocean that lasted through 2015. Millions of seabirds washed ashore from Alaska to California in seven mass extinction events since 2013 — a rate, Parrish said, that is 100 to 1,000 times more than normal, depending on the species. “Now that we know that, we can dive into why the warm water was affecting them. What did it actually do to these birds?” she said. “We only know that because of the work the volunteers are doing, getting numbers on the carcasses.” Citizen scientists also were the ones to alert researchers to early warning data about inva- sive species, like when Euro- pean green crabs started show- ing up on the West Coast in 2016. There have been mul- tiple times Parrish has been alerted to rare seabirds wash- ing ashore that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. “We don’t do that with mainstream science because we don’t have the money, the personnel to do it,” she said. “To me it’s a contract, like a marriage contract, between mainstream scientists and coastal citizenry to monitor coastal health.” Back in Cannon Beach, Owen sees the benefit going both ways with his volunteers. “It’s intrinsically valuable for our volunteers. What they are doing, these issues, directly affect them,” Owen said. “I think they are realizing how accessible it is.” Session: Legislators tackled, health care, guns and net neutrality Continued from Page 1A “Really, the session worked the way it should,” said House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Port- land. “There were emerging issues. We dealt with them, and we did strategic investments for communities that needed some things. We balanced the budget. We also were able to take on some of the bigger issues fac- ing the state.” Republican leaders Rep. Mike McLane of Powell Butte, and Sen. Jackie Winters of Salem said the short session remains “broken.” “Oregonians sent us here to adjust budgets, make minor policy tweaks, and respond to emergencies. Instead, the majority party introduced sig- nificant partisan policy changes that were impossible to prop- erly vet in such a short amount of time,” they said in a joint statement. “While thankfully many of these bills failed to make it to the governor’s desk, it’s hard to escape the reality that the short session is increas- ingly becoming more about political posturing than good policy making.” Health care Lawmakers passed two bills aimed at understanding the high price of prescrip- tion drugs and shining light on coordinated care organiza- tions, which provide govern- ment-subsidized health care to low-income Oregonians through the state’s version of Medicaid. House Bill 4005 requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to disclose reasons for increases in the price of prescrip- tion drugs when the increase exceeds 10 percent. House Bill 4018 makes pub- lic the meetings of the state’s 15 CCOs and requires the organi- zations to give at least three months’ notice before end- ing a contract with the state, an effort to stabilize the health care system. Guns A bill to strip gun rights from convicted stalkers and intimate partners convicted of abuse passed both chambers. Known as closure of the “boy- friend loophole,” the fix was a priority of Gov. Kate Brown for this session. Housing Lawmakers boosted reve- nue to fund affordable housing by raising the real estate doc- ument recording fee from $20 to $60. The fee is the state’s only source of revenue dedi- cated to paying for affordable housing. The increase is projected to generate an additional $60 million every two years Business taxes Lawmakers eliminated a federal deduction for busi- nesses on state tax returns. While the state’s income tax code is largely tied to fed- eral code, business owners with “pass-through” income on their personal income taxes will not be allowed to deduct up to 20 percent of their income in 2018. It was unclear Saturday whether the governor plans on vetoing the bill. She raised some concerns during session over the impact it would have on the state’s small businesses. The bill was intended to stem state revenue losses from federal tax reform late last year. The change is expected to result in $244 million in tax dollars in the existing two-year budget than if the state had allowed the deduction. Net neutrality State lawmakers have no authority to regulate internet companies. However, they can pass laws to use the state’s buy- ing power to encourage certain business practices. In this case, they required that internet providers that con- tract with government entities in the state abide by the prin- ciples of net neutrality. That means contractors may not block, slow down or charge more for certain content. Climate change An ambitious proposal to enact a cap-and-invest pro- gram this year moved through the session without legislative action. The program would have charged companies for emitting carbon dioxide into the atmo- sphere and invested the pro- ceeds into projects designed to offset global warming. Kotek and Courtney said they want to pass the legisla- tion next year during the Leg- islature’s longer session. They also announced the creation of a new Joint Legislative Com- mittee on Carbon Reduction. Lawmakers also added $1.4 million to the state budget as part of the budget reconciliation bill to create a carbon policy office in the state Department of Administrative Services. Health care Portland Rep. Mitch Green- lick’s third try to refer a con- stitutional amendment to vot- ers to make access to affordable and effective health care a fun- damental right was blocked in the Senate. 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