5 online citizen science projects you can join now

If you're reading this, you can advance scientific research right now! Below, our editors highlight five digital citizen science projects you can do online now.

Floating Forests
Kelp forests are important underwater ecosystems and home to many species. With this project, you will identify kelp in photographs, which will help researchers understand how kelp forests change over time.

Cyclone Center
Did you know that the human eye is sometimes better at recognizing patterns than computers? That's why your help is needed to analyze still unknown patterns in images of tropical cyclones.

Einstein@home
Pulsars, or spinning neutron stars, send out gravitational waves that can be used to identify and locate them. You can help find them by contributing processing time from your phone or computer whenever it's idle.

Decodoku
Quantum computing is the technology of the future, and you can help bring it about. Just solve puzzles on your computer or smartphone; the methods you use will contribute to reducing errors in quantum computers.

Purposeful Gaming
If you like playing games, then this is the project for you! In the game, you transcribe pieces of historical biodiversity texts.

Want more citizen science? Check out SciStarter's Project Finder. With 1100+ citizen science projects spanning every field of research, task and age group, there's something for everyone!