Using citizen science to inform pollinator diversity and United States National Park Service management actions and decisions

Background/Question/Methods

: Since 2016, the Pollinator Hotshots field crew has inventoried pollinators (bees and butterflies) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) using innovative technological citizen science field tools such as iNaturalist. Previous research in the GYE, let alone within US National Parks, has not been available. With these efforts, researchers can better understand the status of pollinators within this protected ecosystem. Because of prior efforts in the GYE, a new partnership with the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Division and Colorado State University will help to inventory pollinators across 100 parks. This new initiative requires parks to have explicit management actions or decisions tied to the pollinator inventory request. Some examples of questions that would be informed by pollinator inventories include: what is the impact of climate change on species emergence and floral resources?; what is the effect of grazing disturbance on pollinator-dependent floral resources?; and, how can disturbed ecosystems be better restored to promote pollinator conservation? Fieldwork will include similar methods to the previous Pollinator Hotshot team, where students take photographs of insects and upload them to iNaturalist. This project seeks to inventory bees and butterflies in a noninvasive manner and with the assistance of citizen science and public participation.

Results/Conclusions

: Data using citizen science field methods was completed by Pollinator Hotshot field crews working in the GYE since 2016, leading to over 7000 pollinator observations and over 400 species identified. This initiative intends to scale-up efforts previously seen in the GYE to 10 inventory parks in 2022. This poster will highlight two inventory parks sampled in 2022: Dinosaur National Monument and Yosemite National Park. With all of the collected data, parks will receive deliverables in the form of species occurrence lists that intend to inform park management actions and decisions. In addition, field guides will be published on iNaturalist to highlight the diversity of pollinators seen within the national parks. The inventories will allow parks to adapt their management decisions, and to include pollinators in conservation measures specific to each parks’ changing ecosystem. Results from this study will help to inform broader US pollinator species conservation and provide guidance on sampling efforts in the national parks using citizen science and other technological tools.