This commentary is by Keith Jennings, director of research at the University of Vermont’s Water Resources Institute.
A few short years ago I reached out to VTDigger about a fledgling research project I was leading. We needed volunteers in Vermont to submit observations of rain and snow so we could help NASA better track and simulate precipitation type during winter storms in mountain regions across the U.S.
Readers responded to Emma Cotton’s article enthusiastically. Nearly 300 new Vermont volunteers signed up just after its publication.
I am now writing to VTDigger readers not to report on our findings or share new opportunities, but to warn of the risks coming to the US scientific enterprise from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” just passed by the Senate. The administration is proposing to shutter the very program that funded our work in Vermont, NASA’s Citizen Science for Earth Systems Program.
While NASA may evoke images of spaceflight, galaxy-defining telescopes, and interstellar satellite missions, the agency also has a critical Earth-observation mandate. Its constellation of satellites crisscrosses the globe every day, monitoring important properties like rainfall, soil wetness, river height, land surface temperature, and others.
Underpinning these observations are the unreplaceable measurements of Earth system phenomena, many made by CSESP volunteers, that evaluate and improve the process of data collection, simulation, and synthesis.
Our project, Mountain Rain or Snow, is a prime example. The differences between rain and snow are obvious to a real human observer, but satellites and computer models often struggle to differentiate the two. This shortcoming worsens our ability to predict floods, manage roadway conditions, and estimate avalanche risks.
In peer-reviewed literature, the scientific gold standard, our team has shown time and again that there is no replacement for visual observers. Not even artificial intelligence can do the jobs that humans do.
We are at the precipice of losing this ability to understand our planet. Without CSESP funding, projects like Mountain Rain or Snow, to which Vermonters have volunteered countless hours, will no longer exist.
And it’s not just our team at risk. CSESP projects have examined river ice dynamics for transportation and flooding in Alaska, water quality in Chesapeake Bay, and lake levels across the globe. Work like this is on the verge of disappearing.
Every Vermonter knows that despair is the cousin to apathy. So don’t think of this as a eulogy for U.S. scientific research, but instead treat it as a call to action, a rallying point for continued American scientific excellence.
Talk to your friends, reach out to colleagues in Republican congressional districts, protest the unnecessary kneecapping of U.S.-funded research, and make your opinions known.
The truth exists whether we study it or not. It’s more important now than ever to research and understand our rapidly changing planet.
