Hawaii Coqui Crawl Project - Counting Frogs With Cell Phones

Sam Droege
USGS PWRC, Beltsville, MD
Derek Masaki
USGS NGP/CSAS, Kahului, HI

GIS for Citizen Engagement
Wednesday March 7, 2012 - 10:45 am to noon

The Coqui Crawl project will work to model the distribution and perhaps general abundance of coqui frog in Hawaii...using a network of volunteers armed with mobile handsets.

The model for this effort is the 2009 New York City Cricket Crawl where 300 volunteers, assisted by USGS biologists, used their cellphones to survey for native crickets and katydids in the heart of America’s most populous city. The teams found all 7 targeted species and provided new occurrence points for an insect group last surveyed in New York over 100 years ago.

The lead scientist involved in the project, Sam Droege, will lead a discussion on the methods used in the NYC survey, review outcomes, and provide guidance on conducting a frog survey in Hawaii.