Citizen Science: Characterizing Red Maple Leaf Traits

Steve Gougherty is a PhD student at Boston University in the Department of Biology. As part of his research, he has started a citizen science project that aims to characterize how leaf traits within species vary throughout their geographic distributions. He focuses primarily on differences in nutrient concentrations of green leaves in the summer and freshly fallen leaves in the autumn.

So far, Steve has recruited ~50 citizen scientists from around the country, but is lacking participants from Mississippi. Therefore, Steve is looking for individuals living in Mississippi who'd be interested in collecting red maple (Acer rubrum) leaves from a local maple tree. Collections would be done twice: once when the leaves are green, and once again at leaf fall. Leaf samples would be sent to Boston University for analysis.

For more information and to sign up as a citizen scientist for this project, visit the project website (link below). Feel free to contact Steve with questions (email address above).