Current projects

Archaeological finds of textile remains give an insight into ancient weaving techniques, including fabrics from the Hallstatt salt mine dating from between 1500 and 300 BC, or finds of gold threads such as those from Ebreichsdorf in Lower Austria, ca. 1100 BC. They are scientifically analysed and reworked in the…

Participate in archaeological field surveys and/or in cleaning, documenting & interpreting archaeological finds. A transdisciplinary look at the early Neolithic communities in the Schletz settlement cluster The project aims to explore the surroundings of the famous Neolithic settlement of Asparn/Schletz (Lower Austria). Numerous human remains suggest a violent attack on…

Plastic Pirates - Go Europe! A Citizen Science Initiative to investigate plastic pollution along rivers The pollution of beaches and riverbanks in Europe with plastic waste does not stop at borders. Preventing micro- and macroplastics in the environment, addressing this challenge scientifically and researching sustainable materials are therefore tasks we…

Schmetterlinge Österreichs: an app for scientifically recording Austria's butterflies On behalf of Blühendes Österreich, a charitable foundation of REWE International AG and the environmental NGO GLOBAL 2000, butterfly expert Peter Huemer published a report on the dramatic state of the butterfly fauna in May 2016. In Europe, their number had…

We are tracing the Sculptured Resin Bee! Home of the Sculptured Resin Bee (Megachile sculpturalis, Smith 1853) is far away in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan. In 2008, the Sculptured Resin Bee was discovered in southern France as the first introduced wild bee species in Europe. Since then, the bee…

Since 2006, a wide variety of nature observations can be reported on naturbeobachtung.at. Specially designed reporting masks for various groups of animals, plants and fungi allow detailed entries. The reporters can, as far as possible, identify their observations taxonomically or report them as "undetermined species". The latter can then be…

Democratic Citizenship "Memories and Imaginaries" critically explores with students in Austria what it means to be a citizen. Who can or is allowed to actively participate in the political community? Who can or is not allowed to? We address these questions with the aim of finding collective strategies to confront…

The Pollen Diary was already launched as a scientific project in 2009. Meanwhile it has become an important service for pollen allergy sufferers in 13 European countries: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey. The number of users is growing every year, not…

Be an expert on your disease and join our research! We, the Patient Involvement in Oncology (PATIO) initiative, aim to make the voices of prostate cancer patients and their caregivers heard in medical research. In fact, we know that we currently don’t know enough: patients themselves are the experts that have…

DeVOTE is a research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) from January 2021 to December 2025, and led by Ass.-Prof. Carolina Plescia to develop and apply a new approach to study what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens. The project’s goals are: understand what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens; examine the variation…

"Pilzfinder" - what it's all about Until a few decades ago, knowledge of wild edible and poisonous mushrooms was widespread. Especially the older population knew about the seasonal occurrence of the mushrooms. Finding mushrooms is a popular hobby for young and old, which is accompanied by great experience. In order…

Important groundwork for bird protection The association BirdLife Austria has been researching and protecting the native avifauna for over 50 years. Citizen science has always been an essential basis of this work, as BirdLife's expertise is based on decades of collecting bird records. In the past, observations were recorded on…

Mapping the distribution of all Austrian breeding birds in the years 2013 to 2018. What is the Breeding bird atlas? The Breeding bird atlas shows the areas of occurrence of all bird species breeding in Austria. It is a central groundwork for bird protection: In addition to the birds’ distributions,…

"Crows in the zoo" is a Citizen Science project of the Department for Behavioral and Cognitive Biology of the University of Vienna in cooperation with the Konrad Lorenz Research Center and the Zoo Vienna. The researchers aim to find out more about the species and subspecies of crows that use the…

Are swallows nesting at your house or in your stable? Have you seen a badger in the middle of town? Or do you regularly observe a kestrel in your garden? We are interested in your observations in rural settlement areas!

Ural owl resettlement The resettlement of the Ural owl is led by a team of researchers headed by ornithologist Richard Zink at the Austrian Ornithological Centre – Seebarn branch office (Lower Austria) at "Vetmeduni" Vienna. The goal is the "Come Back" of the big owl into the forests of Austria.…

The project Pilzdaten-Austria.eu aims at a comprehensive documentation of the occurrence and distribution of fungi in Austria, and to present and evaluate the available data. It is an Austria-wide cooperation of numerous mycologists, citizen scientists and institutions, which collect distribution data of fungi or hold collections of fungal specimens, coordinated…

Can tea help us understand climate change? Yes, but we need your help! We would like you to become our research partner and take part in one of the largest experiments on soil decomposition processes at the moment!

What is the Zeit.shift project about?  Zeit.Shift is an Interreg project of the Provincial Library Dr. Friedrich Teßmann, the University and Provincial Library Tyrol and the research institute Eurac Research with the aim of computer-linguistically indexing historical newspapers from the Tyrolean region together with Citizen Scientists and publishing them online.…

Participatory exploration of the "Kremser scorpion” (Euscorpius tergestinus) with school students "Triestino scorpion" (Euscorpius tergestinus - still listed as E. carpathicus in the Red List of NÖ), which are threatened with extinction in Lower Austria, exists as an archaeozoon in Krems. This population is an isolated north-eastern outpost of the…

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…

The CAMALIOT (Application of Machine Learning Technology for GNSS IoT Data Fusion) project The CAMALIOT project integrates data from the Internet of Things (IoT), including smartphones, and traditional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data sources to leverage Big Data, Data Fusion and Machine Learning technologies to to demonstrate how these data can be used in different scientific…

In this citizen science project of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, we would like to create an overview of where animals are roadkilled and what reasons there might be for this. In the Roadkill project, we would like to cooperate with you in many ways, because…

Citizen Science with a long tradition The first water bird counts in Austria took place as early as the 1950s. In the following years, the number of counts was gradually increased, and from 1970 onwards Austria-wide surveys have been carried out. This makes the waterbird census one of the longest…

“Explore the European landscape and help science to protect the climate and the environment!” Do you like to be out in the fresh air? Would you like to make a concrete contribution to protect the environment and the climate and earn something in addition? With the FotoQuestGo app, you can…

Since April 2021, the University of Vienna has been working on the project BaF - Biodiversity in Cemeteries in cooperation with Friedhöfe Wien (Vienna cemeteries). The aim is to document biodiversity (the occurrence of a wide variety of animal, plant and fungal species) and to investigate the active and passive…

We take care of our meadows and our alpine pastures! Since 2007, farmers from all over Austria have been observing the development of plants and animals on their meadows. The project motto "We take care of our meadows!" stands for the annual counting and documentation of indicator species as well…

The kestrel is the most common raptor in the city of Vienna. Since 2010, the "Vienna Kestrel Project" has been investigating how these falcons have adapted to city life. A key component of our research is knowledge about nest locations which allow us to access broods for further investigation. The…

In the Institute of Silviculture at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, 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 5,500 fires, more…

With the Citizen Science Project "CITREE" a crowdsourcing instrument for monitoring the growth of urban trees, will be developed and used. It builds on the "Sparkling Science" project "Woody Woodpecker", which deals with the growth, structure and function of wood. Urban trees fulfill a variety of functions, such as improving…

What is the project specifically about? So much hangs on just one thing - and yet words sometimes fail us. How do we talk about our bodies and the things that we need, want, and do when it comes to sex and sexual pleasure? And who do we talk to…