One of the best parts about working on a nifty program that enables students to be scientists and investigate for native and invasive species is…. going on investi-ventures!
Here are the investi-venture data records that I published to the Vital Signs website this year:
Cow Parsnip...not Giant Hogweed
The giant hogweed observation is particularly interesting as an example of Vital Signs working eaxactly as it should! Armed with a giant hogweed species identification card that I had created the GMRI Science Translation Intern (Patrick) and I ventured out to find or not find the invasive giant hogweed plant. We found a plant that we were convinced was giant hogweed, collected data, and uploaded our findings to the Vital Signs website. Later, a species expert perused the data record and from our photographs and description of the plant she was able to identify the plant as cow parsnip, not giant hogweed! It’s okay to be wrong in science, as long as you collect good data.
As a result of the comments by the species expert I updated the giant hogweed species card so that future investigators might notice some of the details that we had missed. Patrick posted the story of our giant hogweed investigation to GMRI’s blog.