We invite urban community gardens, garden projects or similar garden initiatives to take part in this project and research alongside us. The goal of this project is to scientifically assess the potential risk of heavy metal contamination in crop plants in Vienna’s city gardens.
Urban gardening has become increasingly popular over the last two decades. However, gardeners are often concerned about their crops being contaminated by heavy metals.
Plant access to heavy metals is strongly influenced by the soil properties and the plants being cultivated. Through targeted soil management, it is possible to reduce the likelihood of heavy metals transferring to plants.
We want to learn whether the heavy metal content in plants grown in one variant (e.g. a mix with compost) differs from that of plants grown in a control variant (untreated urban soil).
We need you for this! Become a citizen scientist and conduct a “pan test” in your urban garden with spinach and/or radishes. Plant and soil samples will be collected from these tests and an analysis for heavy metals will then be carried out in our laboratory.
The entire gardening community will benefit from involvement in this project. Together, we can collect the following information about the location of the garden:
More information on the Heavy Metal City-Zen project can be found on the website.
Just send us an e-mail stating that you are interested in participating to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The results from the project are presented in the corresponding blog post (in German).
Project management: Andrea Watzinger – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Scientific project management: Rebecca Hood-Nowotny – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Institute of Soil Research
Department of Forest and Soil Sciences
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Konrad-Lorenz-Strasse 24 | 3430 Tulln
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The project was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
Due to the enormous request and the multitude of consignments of fossil images encompassing almost the entire Earth history, the precise issues and the resulting project target were adapted in accordance to the requirements and wishes oft he citizen scientists. The geographical and chronological distribution of fossils in Austria is a particular focal point in the scientific problem of this geoscience project. Exciting field research in the Austrian Alps forms the foundation of the resulting research. Effective explorations in Austria are continuously declining, but knowledge about fossils is always increasing. This gap can be closed with the combined energy of both young and old, from scientists to citizen scientists. Methods from biostratigraphy and taxonomy are used, as are the latest techniques in photographic documentation. The relative age of ammonites, molluscs and snails are identified, which then allows basic classification in taxonomic groups. These methods and goals then lead to more complete data on the distribution of various fossil groups in Austria. Scientists then benefit from knowing about sources for different fossil groups in new locations and citizen scientists benefit from precise identification by specialists.
Here you can also find the Young Science contact for interested schools and teachers.
This new project gives interested citizen scientists, who range from school pupils to amateur collectors and professional scientists, a basis for identifying new fossil findings, publishing these and thereby completing the network of data from the Earth history in Austria. The collaborators are thus collecting new data for research into the Earth history of the Alps in particular but also of Austria in general. This can be through photo documentation or by actively collecting Cretaceous fossils. Another very useful dimension to this project is the treasures kept in private collections belonging to many citizen scientists. These discoveries are entered into accessible data sets and inventory databases and should result in a comprehensive picture of deposits formed during the Earth history and its fossils in Austria. The data is evaluated, made available as a graphic online and shown on the Fossilfinder APP. The aim of this is to then create an interactive map showing the geographic distribution of these discoveries. The new project enables a correlation with other places of discovery from the same era and fossil associations in Europe.
The tasks within the project are supported individually. The project manager is, on the one hand, responsible for coordinating and creating data sets and processing the information into publications and databases that can be accessed and viewed by any interested party, whether scientists, collectors, amateur researchers or citizen scientists. The areas of responsibility for citizen scientists mean that the volunteers in the project are allocated a variety of tasks. These range from collecting finds and reporting them to the joint potential description to the final inventory and publication of the fauna and flora in Austria’s Earth history.
There will soon be a link to the data and the accompanying results on the project page on Österreich forscht. This will also provide a detailed description of where and how you can find and utilise the project data.
Those who are interested in taking part should contact Dr Alexander Lukeneder via e-mail (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or telephone (0043 1 52177 251).
If you would like to learn more, you can listen to the Wissen macht Leute podcast episode about the project (in German).
App: SPOTTERON Citizen Science Plattform
Open interactive map in full screen
Click on an image to enlarge.
Lukeneder, A., Surmik, D., Gorzelak, P. et al. Bromalites from the Upper Triassic Polzberg section (Austria); insights into trophic interactions and food chains of the Polzberg palaeobiota. Scientific Reports 10, 20545 (2020)
Involved citizen scientists: Birgitt Aschauer and Karl Aschauer
Type of participation: collecting fossils, donating specimens to science
Lukeneder, A., Zverkov, N. 2020. First evidence of a conical-toothed pliosaurid (Reptilia, Sauropterygia) in the Hauterivian of the Northern Calcareous Alps, Austria. Cretaceous Research 106, February 2020, 104248
Involved citizen scientists: Karl Bösendorfer
Type of participation: reporting the locality, collecting fossils
Lukeneder, A. 2018. A new ammonoid fauna from the Northern Calcareous Alps (upper Hauterivian–lower Barremian, Austria). Cretaceous Research, 88, 158-172.
Involved citizen scientists: Karl Bösendorfer
Type of participation: collecting fossils, donating specimens to science
Picture: (c) Alexander Lukeneder
Lukeneder, A., Lukeneder, P. 2022. Taphonomic history and trophic interactions of an ammonoid fauna from the Upper Triassic Polzberg palaeobiota. Scientific Reports, 12, 7455.
Involved citizen scientists: Birgitt and Karl Aschauer
Type of participation: donating specimens to science
Picture: (c) Alexander and Petra Lukeneder
Lukeneder, P., Lukeneder A. 2022. Mineralized coleoid cranial cartilage from the Late Triassic Polzberg Konservat-Lagerstätte (Austria)". PLOS ONE, 17(4): e0264595.
Involved citizen scienctist: Birgitt and Karl Aschauer
Types of participation: donating specimens to science
Picture: (c) Alexander Lukender, 7reasons
Lukeneder, A., Zverkov, N., Kaurin, C., Blüml, V. 2022. First Early Cretaceous ichthyosaurs of Austria and the problem of Jurassic–Cretaceous ichthyosaurian faunal turnover. Cretaceous Research, 136, 2022, 105224.
Involved citizen scientists: Karl Bösendorfer, Alfred Leiflfinger
Type of participation: collecting fossils, donating specimens to science
Picture: (c) Lukeneder, NHMW
Lukeneder, A., Lukeneder P. 2021. The Upper Triassic Polzberg palaeobiota from a marine Konservat-Lagerstätte deposited during the Carnian Pluvial Episode in Austria. Nature Research, Scientific Reports, 11, 16644 (2021).
Involved citizen scientists: Birgitt and Karl Aschauer
Types of participation: donating specimens to science
In the following you will find interesting internet links with Cretaceous period reference. On these pages citizen scientists can read the latest publications about fossils, environment or climate variations of the Cretaceous period. In addition, internationally and globally valid classifications and zonings of the Cretaceous can be viewed. Important data and facts for route planning and the localization of find points can be planned and retrieved in digital systems. Tectonic units and rock formations can be explored on geological maps.
All these data are freely accessible on the assigned links.
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/cretaceous-research
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/palaeogeography-palaeoclimatology-palaeoecology
http://www.austrianmap.at/amap/
https://www.kompass.de/wanderkarte/
https://www.geologie.ac.at/onlineshop/karten
https://fossils-of-austria.at/
In 2022, poject coordinator Alexander Lukeneder held a lecture about Fossilfinder as part of the lecture series "Citizen Science Seminar" at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU): "Fossilfinder - to report or not to report, that is the question" (in German). Here, you can watch the video recording of the lecture on our YouTube-channel:
The growing flood of images cannot be processed by institutions alone. Partnership with citizen scientists is vital. Topotheque is a digital archive and network in which this historical legacy can be gathered. For the locally resident Topotheque users, every new image and new piece of information means a valuable building block with which they can document their regional history in more detail. Enthusiasm for the work with the Topotheques creates local archives that captures an interest that goes far beyond regional interest. This includes prop managers and costume designers on period films and scientists who can retrace the spread of a cattle breed in the 1930s. People have very often discovered a photo of a great-grandfather in the photos that were provided by a previously unknown person.
The Topotheque is run by a municipality or an association. Volunteers and digital archivists at the Topotheque work on behalf of the municipality as links with the general public. Running a Topotheque is easy and the entry field on the administration user interface meets the international archive standard. Before the update was started, the Topotheque volunteers were introduced to the system in a two-hour training course using ICARUS. A Topotheque is usually opened at a locally organised event in which interested members of the public are presented with the Topotheque as a digital option to gather contemporary documents. Local museums and municipal archives often benefit from the Topotheque, as they can be sent originals. Similarly, memory institutions can take advantage of the Topotheque as a platform for their own inventories.
The Topotheque creates new groups of users. A Topotheque can not only answer questions about the history of a castle complex, but also provide quick information on the questions “What did the inn look like in the 1960s?” or “Are there photos of old innkeepers?”. Questions asked offhand, which often refer to details, can be answered. These questions are asked by a new and often younger userbase. To get in touch, you can ask the Topotheque a question, which can be answered directly through the website. This is because dialogue is the heart and soul of the Topotheque.
The Topotheque was developed in an office in Wiener Neustadt. Based on the first “Prater” Topotheque as an example, municipalities in Lower Austria were the first to make private material about the community history available with the help of volunteers. The Topotheque was also well received in Upper Austria and implemented in a regional project as part of LEADER. The LEADER regions Weinviertel-Ost, Weinviertel Donauraum, Traunviertler Alpenvorland and Eferdingerland as well as other regions are using topotheques or preparing to use the Topothek. With Carinthia, where the Topothek was launched as a provincial project, the Topotheque is now being joined by a new province. In the “co:op” EU project, the topic of which is communication work in the archive, the Topotheque was established in seven other countries. Through the international archive platform ICARUS, the Lower Austria state archive joined as a scientific partner.
In the Institute of Silviculture at the BOKU University, the occurrence, spread, causes and characteristics of forest fires in Austria have been analysed as part of various research projects since 2008. The array stretches back over several decades and includes approximately 8,000 fires, more than 7,000 of which were categorised as forest fires. The majority of forest fires were recorded in spring and summer. Parts of Carinthia, Tyrol, Styria, and the southern regions of Lower Austria were comparably highly affected by forest fires. Most of the fires were caused by human actions. These were either direct, caused by an out-of-control fire, or indirect, e.g. by a carelessly discarded cigarette. In the summer months, fires caused by lightning also play a role as they make up 40 % of the total. Many forest fires are investigated in more detail as case studies in order to analyse fire behaviour, the mortality of individual trees affected and the regeneration of forests. Increased attention is also being paid to the processing of forest fires before the year 2000.
In spring 2013, the Institute of Silviculture created an online platform that enables easy collection and analysis of forest fires that is not dependent on systems. The “Fire Database” web GIS application is available for free and allows interested members of the public to scan forest fire incidents and create statistics or graphics. Similarly, current or past forest fires can be recorded through an online entry form.
In June 2023, project coordinator Mortimer Müller was guest on the Österreich forscht podcast Wissen macht Leute - you can listen to the episode here (in German).
In 2021, poject coordinator Harald Vacik held a lecture about "Fire Database" as part of the lecture series "Citizen Science Seminar" at BOKU University: "Challenges of forest fire research in the alpine region" (in German). At the bottom of this page you can watch the video recording of the lecture.
In Viel-Falter: Butterfly Monitoring volunteers, together with researchers from the Department of Ecology of the University of Innsbruck, observe, identify and count butterflies. The aim is to build up and establish an Austria-wide systematic butterfly monitoring.
Butterflies are an excellent indicator group for the ecologically extremely important animal group of insects. They react quickly and sensitively to habitat and environmental changes. Butterflies are also excellent for raising awareness of the importance of biodiversity due to their positive image.
Given the diverse habitats in Austria, 4,095 different species of butterflies live here, considerably more than in the much larger Germany. At the same time, many butterfly species are threatened and even species that used to be common are seen more rarely. The main causes for this downturn are changes in land use, intensification in agriculture and use of pesticides. Precise statements are difficult, however, as there are hardly any long-term monitoring programs to date. This is exactly what will change thanks to the Viel-Falter: Butterfly Monitoring.
In the Viel-Falter: Butterfly monitoring, surveys by volunteers (Citizen Science) are combined with professional scientific surveys. Thus, the advantages of two approaches are used to collect high quality and scientifically sound data. Thereby, the Viel-Falter butterfly monitoring also makes an important contribution to an Austrian biodiversity monitoring as well as an EU-wide butterfly monitoring.
At the same time, the monitoring contributes to raising awareness of the importance of biodiversity by involving volunteers. Education and public relations are therefore an important part of the Viel-Falter: Butterfly monitoring. At regular training and education events, participating volunteers and other interested parties can improve their knowledge and species awareness and make an important contribution to nature conservation.
To ensure good data quality, intensive and personal training and support of the volunteers involved is of great importance. Our online course makes it possible to address many interested parties while maintaining a high level of quality. The course explains what biodiversity monitoring is, why it is important, and how butterfly monitoring works. The course is concluded by an individual personal meeting.
Click here for the blog post that introduces the course in more detail (in German).
Anyone interested in butterflies can observe butterflies with a simple identification guide for butterflies in predefined locations in Austria. The observations will be carried out several times a year. No previous knowledge is required. The Viel-Falter team will offer personal training tailored to the individual volunteer.
The Viel-Falter: Butterfly Monitoring is managed by the Department of Ecology of the University of Innsbruck and implemented together with the Natural Science Collections of the Tyrolean State Museums and EURAC.
It is part of the Insect Monitoring Austria: Butterflies funded by the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK), the Butterfly Monitoring Tyrol funded by the Department of Environmental Protection of the Province of Tyrol and the Butterfly Monitoring Vorarlberg supported by inatura, the Province of Vorarlberg and the Blühendes Österreich Foundation.
GenTeam is a European platform of genealogical databases. Both scientists and amateur genealogists can make their data available here for free for other researchers. The cooperation of collaborators from many different countries has made it possible to compile databases that one researcher could not typically manage alone due to the volume. Our focus is currently on the indexing of ecclesiastical sources from Lower Austria, on a baptismal and death index of Vienna, as well as on an overall index of Austria-Hungary's casualty lists from the First World War. The baptismal index of Vienna between 1784 and 1900 alone will probably comprise about 4 million data records, of which more than 3,000,000 have already been recorded. They will in turn become the basis for scientific research. Of the approximately 3 million data of the loss lists, more than 2 million have already been recorded.
The more than 64,000 registered users currently have more than 21 million records available. These users come from a variety of countries from around the world. They are primarily genealogists, although there are also scientists, historians and biographers who increasingly make use of this resource. GenTeam is free and there is no membership fee.
All voluntary membership is more than welcome!
Project coordinator Felix Gundacker made the platform available with GenTeam (and also promoted its potential), while researchers and research groups have the option to provide data and forward these lists to coordinators (sometimes after prior query/consultation). To conclude, the coordinator ensures that all data is put online.
“Soon, everyone who visits the GenTeam site will ask themselves how they got by without this fantastic source!”
Dr Peter Braunwarth, 2011
Austria is rich in a wide range of mineral deposits. Precise documentation of both “old” deposits (e.g. mining heaps and tunnels, slag heaps) and “new” location spots (e.g. quarries, natural outcrops, road cuts, etc.) is one of the focuses of the Department of Mineralogy and Petrography at the Natural History Museum Vienna. This can be achieved only with the help of mineral collectors, amateur mineralogists and members of the general public interested in mineralogy who collect minerals and make them available to scientific experiments. The outstanding collaboration with collectors with regard to documenting mineralogy in Lower Austria (“NÖ mineral database”) and Vorarlberg should be expanded to other federal states. Tyrol in particular is still relatively unexplored in comparison to other federal states.
© Harald Schillhammer
Mineral collectors, amateur mineralogists and members of the general public who are interested in mineralogy.
The project is running for an unspecified period.
Across all of Austria (especially Tyrol).
Citizen scientists can support research by collecting minerals and documenting mineral discoveries, as well as providing samples for mineralogical analyses. The results of scientific analyses will usually be published in popular scientific publications (in German) (e.g. as “Neue Mineralfunde aus Österreich” [New minerals found in Austria] in the journal “Carinthia II” or, more rarely, in the journals “Der Steirische Mineralog”, “Der Aufschluss”, “Mineralien-Welt” or “Lapis”), whereby the project manager sends the final article to all participants in PDF format. Articles in “Carinthia II” generally become open access one year after publication, which means that anyone can download them for free.
Shortly after publication, the project manager will enter the new mineral analyses in all publications, together with meaningful photos, into freely accessible international mineral and mineral location databases, such as Mindat (in English) and Mineralienatlas - Fossilienatlas (in German).
The publications are often written in co-authorship with the finder, especially if they provided important information through good documentation of the discovery and circumstances of finding, or through research into literature in archives and by surveying residents at the location.
Exceptional scientific results will also be published in international, English-language scientific journals.
Examples of popular science publications from recent years are:
If you are interested and/or want to take part, please contact:
Priv.-Doz. Dr. Uwe Kolitsch
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In 2017 the Citizen Science Network Austria was founded, which is coordinated by the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences. This network aims to further develop citizen science in Austria, to promote quality and to strengthen the dialogue between science and society.
In order to formalise these tasks of the network, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by all member institutions of the network. The most important excerpts from this MoU are listed here:
These institutions from the fields of science, research, education and practice declare to pursue the following objectives, taking into account the respective institutional scope of their activity:
These member institutions declare that, in order to achieve these objectives, they intend to fulfil the following tasks in particular:
You will find a list and short introduction of all member institutions in the Partners section. In addition, the Citizen Science Network Austria also enters into partnerships with international networks. Individual agreements on cooperation are made with these networks. A list of the international partners can be found under the heading International Partners. In addition, the Citizen Science Network Austria is also pleased to welcome supporters who support the network or the platform Österreich forscht, especially through their activities. These can be found in the category Supporters.
Since 2017, we have reported on the accomplishments of the Citizen Science Network Austria in the form of an annual performance report. These performance reports can be found in the section performance reports of our website.
This project ran from 01.07.2017 to 31.12.2019. You can download a thematic booklet created in the process at the bottom of this page. In addition, print copies can now be made available to school classes free of charge (while stocks last). Please contact the project leaders if you would like to use them for teaching.
Studies in social history have documented time and again that migration has always been part of the human existence. If migration movements are as old as human history itself, world history can be read as a story of mobility. In today's world, international references have become part of day-to-day life – whether we are shopping, eating in a restaurant, watching television, at the cinema, maintaining a certain lifestyle or taking political action. These everyday situations in which we find ourselves and in which we act build our biographies and our familial references. They are also involved in many ways in events that cannot exclusively be defined locally, even if they manifest in a locally specific manner.
It is with this in mind that, together with their (grand)parents, teachers and friends, youth from Tyrol researched their family histories of migration and searched for traces of mobility in their neighbourhoods. They also gained broad support from universities and civil society. The project’s active network, which is based at the Institute for Educational Science in the Migration and Education learning and research field, includes:
It also included citizens from the Innsbruck/Pradl and Fulpmes Tirolean research areas, who wrote reports on the history of migration in their areas or provided documents that were relevant to the project (e.g. artefacts of migration).
Why not take a look into your own family history? You can refer to family migration experience if, for example, an uncle emigrated to Canada for professional reasons or if your grandparents moved to Tyrol from the capital city through internal migration. Our regions of experience cover the entire world. In this way, multiple affiliations are possible and there are a variety of examples of this from multi-home day-to-day life:
A pupil from Tyrol meets her best friend over Skype and regional borders. Every week, a university assistant commutes between his home and work. During the week, he works in Vienna and at the weekend, he spends time with his family in Innsbruck. It is a long car journey from Tyrol to Serbia, especially when the children are excited about Gran’s baklava. One teenager is immersed in several languages a day: he speaks German with his sister, Kurdish with his mother and a regional dialect with his best friend.
In this research project, young people are experts in their life experience and actively shaped the entire research process: they developed their own research questions, which they then answered with the help of open interviews with parents and relatives. Furthermore, the young people used ethnographic field research to search for traces of migration in their immediate area and district.
From a scientific perspective, it was then asked how migration is perceived and evaluated in individual families and whether there is a knowledge or awareness of migration. The artefacts of migration, and other items, brought into project lessons and schools helped with this.
Based on the knowledge obtained on family and location-specific histories of migration, the young people organised a final event in Innsbruck. The research results were also entered into an online notebook, which was largely aimed at schools and the general public. On the one hand, this project made a significant contribution to researching family stories of migration and the city. On the other hand, the findings from the project should serve to create another form of awareness of migration and diversity in your location.
(Click on an image to enlarge)
Prof. Dr. Erol Yildiz und Ass.-Prof. Dr. Marc Hill (Forschungs-Bildungs-Kooperationen), both Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft/Migration und Bildung
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Scientific project staff: Mag. Miriam Hill, Anita Rotter MA
Student assistant: Alexander Böttcher, BA
Universität Innsbruck, Forschungszentrum Migration und Globalisierung
1 July 2017 – 31 May 2019
Sparkling Science/BMBWF
This project has already been completed. You can download the final report at the bottom of this page.
In “Tell us!”, we are looking for research questions on accidental injuries.
Medical advances need innovative ideas: your knowledge is valuable! Who knows best how occupational, traffic-related or sports injuries should be investigated and treated? With “Tell us!”, the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft has started to bring questions of accidental injuries into research.
Almost everyone suffers from an injury, whether from sports, at work or in a traffic accident, at some point. In “Tell us!”, we are looking for research questions on accidental injuries. Our goal is to research your questions.
We want to therefore include citizens in research because we are certain that through doing this, we can initiate innovative research.
Over a period of eight weeks, up to 8 May, research questions can be submitted on our website.
Participation takes place online and needs about 10 minutes. You can submit your question(s) in either English or German. This all takes place on our website.
No, there is no need for prior knowledge. You do not need any research experience. We believe that not having any experience could be an advantage! All that you need is one, or a few, questions on accidental injuries and ten minutes.
The results will first be collected by us and then systematically analysed. We will anonymise all of the submitted research questions using Open Knowledge Maps. This will allow researchers in the field of accidental injuries from all over the world to have access and incorporate these questions into their research.
This process will be carried out to ensure transparency and we want to include those who provided the ideas, if desired. This is very important to us!
Our approach to collecting research questions from patients’ practical experiences and systematically including them in research is unique in the field of medicine. “Tell us!” will contribute to having clinical knowledge flowing better into research, thereby enabling improvement in diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.
Take a look behind the scenes of this project in a science interview with Eva with project manager Benjamin Missbach.