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Rafe Sagarin, an assistant research scientist with the UA's Institute of the Environment, advocates the use of observational methods and involving the public in research.

Rafe Sagarin is old school.

We're talking the old school of naturalists Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace or Edward Ricketts – the school of studying and understanding ecology and Mother Nature through pure observation.

Largely abandoned in favor of laboratory experiments a century ago, the back-to-basics approach to ecology – one of field notes, log books and holistic analysis, combined with more modern technology – is vital for addressing the scope of the globe's environmental problems, said Sagarin, an assistant research scientist who joined The University of Arizona's Institute of the Environment in August.

"A big shift is already occurring in science, especially ecological science, back towards primarily observational methods," Sagarin said.

"It's driven by both the urgency of the large-scale environmental changes we're seeing now and by the opportunity to study large-scale environmental change with new technologies and with the long time frame with which we've been looking at environmental change," he added.

Those new technologies, including remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, animal-borne sensors like Critter Cams, and population genetics have increased our capacity to understand ecological change exponentially, he said.   

Sagarin and Aníbel Pauchard of Universidad de Concepción and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity in Chile explore these ideas in an article that was published online in August. The article was published by Frontiers e-View, a service that publishes fully edited and formatted manuscripts before they appear in print in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The environmental problems of today necessitate an emphasis on observation, Sagarin explained.

These problems are occurring on such a large scale in time and space and are so destructive to ecological systems that researchers cannot replicate them ethically or logistically in small scale experiments, or conduct studies in nature preserves as if humans aren't the most important driver of ecological change, he said.

The shift toward jotting down notes in the field, combined with new technologies, is opening doors to a powerful component of the observational approach itself: the public.

Observational science can be translated easily through images in the media and into a tangible, direct connection with what is happening in nature.

In addition, Sagarin said, setting up a robust science monitoring program that allows amateurs and enthusiasts to record and report data that is useful to scientists is relatively easy thanks to innovations such as the Internet.

"What comes out is a kind of science that is much more accessible to a much wider audience who are both consumers of that information and producers of that information. The more human eyes we have on ecological change, the better," he said.

The role of citizen scientist proved invaluable for UA researchers Theresa Crimmins and Michael Crimmins, who used data meticulously recorded by a hiker to show that plants are flowering at higher elevations in Arizona's Santa Catalina Mountains as summer temperatures rise.

The two scientists teamed up with naturalist Dave Bertelsen, who recorded what plants were in flower during his weekly hiking trips along Finger Rock trail between 1984 and 2003.

The USA National Phenology Network, headquartered at the UA, encourages such collaborations and citizen science programs such as Project BudBurst, which provides useful, relevant data on the phenology – the timing of seasonal events such as flowering or the first unfurling of leaves-of terrestrial plants.

Similarly, RainLog.org, created by the UA's Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas center and Cooperative Extension in 2005, gathers monsoon data in the Upper San Pedro River. The organization has grown to include more than 1,400 active volunteers who report precipitation from backyard gauges across Arizona.

Sagarin most recently put observation to work at Duke University, where he was associate director for ocean and coastal policy at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

He also served as an assistant research professor in the Division of Marine Science and Conservation in the Nicholas School of the Environment.

At the UA, Sagarin wants to help form interdisciplinary connections across campus related to environmental change, and he would like to collaborate with other researchers working on ecological issues involving the Sea of Cortez, where he has worked before.

In that research, published in 2008 in Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment, Sagarin and his team followed the expedition of writer John Steinbeck and ecologist Edward Ricketts to the Sea of Cortez in 1940.

Using Steinbeck and Ricketts' observations, Sagarin documented changes that have occurred in the marine communities in the region and now would like to focus on why those changes have occurred.

Using observational methods to explore these and all other ecological changes could have particularly significant implications for education and society's future batches of amateur and professional scientists, Sagarin said.

"We've just gone through a long phase...where kids are getting out less and less into nature and understanding less and less about nature," he said. "Observation can really change that; it could get students and young kids involved as scientists."