Tracking Cicadas, With Helpers

The 17-year Magicicada Brood II cicadas are coming, and WNYC and its nationally distributed “Radiolab” program will be there to welcome them â€" after a mad sprint to persuade hundreds of listeners in the next two weeks to build temperature sensors and stick them in the ground, from Virginia to Connecticut.

The sensors, meant to predict the start of the cicadas’ en masse emergence, measure soil temperature at a depth of eight inches. Cicadas emerge in the days after it hits 64 degrees, expected between mid-April and late-May, said John Keefe, senior editor of data news for WNYC, who, with colleagues, initially built an $80 sensor with parts from Radio Shack.

John Keefe/WNYC An early prototype of the cicada tracker WNYC is using.

After Mr. Keefe announced the Cicada Tracker in mid-March, members of the group Hack Manhattan developed a $16 sensor, making a larger project financially feasible, and “Radiolab” jumped in.

Tapping $8,000 of an existing grant from the National Science Foundation, “Radiolab” has scheduled Cicada Tracker Maker events April 8 in Brooklyn and April 14 at the New York Hall of Science. Using their newly built trackers, attendees will be encouraged to enter findings on WNYC’s interactive map as temperatures rise, along with pictures and audio when the cicadas arrive.

The project “gives anybody the opportunity to put their hands on the tools of science,”said Ellen Horne, executive producer of “Radiolab,” adding that the hope was to get more than 500 sensors buried by April 15. The map and a video showing how to make sensors is at www.radiolab.org/cicadas.

In addition to engaging a wide audience in science, “this will give a much finer grain understanding to scientists” about the cicadas, as well as temperature variations across the Northeast, said Ellen McCallie, a National Science Foundation program officer who finances Citizen Science projects.

The cicadas’ arrival will not be breaking news, since scientists know they are coming, sensors or not. But Mr. Keefe hopes the sensor project will demonstrate the possibilities for news gathering. “If we can get many, many people building little hard things to put in the ground, that’s just one step removed from monitoring noise, pollution, benzene in the air â€" take your pick,” he said.