Tomorrow Monique and I will be heading down to Wilson’s Prom, our study area, to conduct surveys and interviews with park visitors.
It’s school holidays here in Victoria, so we expect there to be a wide range of people making the trip down, including lots of families and your general assortment of trekkers and campers.
This is mainly for Monique’s research, who is taking a more citizen science approach to the problem of nation park management. For the purpose of involving the “crowd” in the management of the park, she’s hoping to get a sense of people’s familiarity with technology, their photo taking and sharing habits, as well as the types of education programs children are exposed to in school, particularly those involving activity-based field trips where students have the opportunity to contribute their observations.
If you’re lucky enough to be near Tidal River over the next few days, watch out for a pair of tall students in cheesy RMIT vests holding clipboards and being friendly. There will be lollies in it for you.
In between harassing tourists I hope to have time to work on my location literature review, and spend some quality time with the rangers – the people I’ll be harassing for my own project come early next year.
I also want to spend some time working on the iOS app Reuben and I are making, which I’ll use in the aforementioned research, and, if I’m lucky, maybe a walk up Mt. Oberon.
The image above is of a citizen volunteer recording the behaviour and movement of Mountain Gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda.
You maybe use the word harassment and variations of it too much in this entry. Other than that I like it.