You may not realize it, but there is a very important part of our food chain that is under duress.
One-third of the food we consume on a daily basis depends on animal pollination. Eighty percent of all flowering plants rely specifically on the pollination of bees. The problem is, these bees are in trouble. Both the honeybee and native bee populations are declining.
Scientists know that if they were able to figure out where bees are doing well and where they’re not, they would be able to address some strategies for helping them out. With millions of bees all over the country, though, they need to come up with a very creative solution for collecting all of that data.
Well, one very clever and talented researcher has decided to use a creativity technique to do just that. Processor Gretchen Lebuhn used the task unification technique to start The Great Sunflower Project. In this episode, we’re discussing this project in depth. I’m explaining how Professor Lebuhn’s project works and where the SIT method plays into it.
In this episode you’ll hear:
- How The Great Sunflower project allows scientists to get an accurate picture of what’s going on with bees.
- The creative part of this project.
- How the task unification technique works.
- What crowdsourcing is and how it plays into all of this.
