Does any one combine both aspects? I feel the potential of both hiking and performing some sort of basic research (collecting, sampling, etc) would be very beneficial. Currently, there are tons of videos of hiking and experiences.
I am really just curious if there is researchers out there that record their hiking experience while simultaneously performing research tasks?
There are many opportunities.
Line transect sampling lends itself well to this combination. As citizen-scientist there are national annual butterfly and bird surveys in the USA.
Most field sampling methods require considerable walking. If you hike to remote locations, so much the better.
Field scouting for pests often requires considerable hiking.
Ecological surveys, or running traps in remote locations. This does require that one returns to the study areas multiple times.
I think that in this case a sampling tool would be necessary, in that case the photograph could become useful when the diversity is easy to identify clearly. Be careful and do not make some mistakes of some projects that call themselves citizen science
There are only a few criteria to make a reasonable project.
1) Mark out a set course, and know the distance or area.
2) Make sure the identifications are correct.
3) Do not vary or adapt the method.
4) Do not count the same individual twice in one sample. Depending on the research, it might be fine to count the same individual in subsequent sampling dates.
5) In some cases gathering the data is easy and fun. Knowing what to do with it afterwards is more difficult. It is easy to do a great deal of work only to figure out that it doesn't mean anything because it was not collected to current standards.
Probably the best plan would be to think about what sort of creature you like: birds, insects, mammals, fish, plants, etc... Go to your university website and look through the faculty list in the ornithology, entomology, biology, ichthyology, or botany department and ask if there is someone in the department who does survey work. If nothing is obvious, just contact someone and describe what you have in mind and see if they can point you to the right person.
Think about what you are willing to do before talking to the faculty member. They might welcome the help if you are willing to hike over "here," but your current favorite hiking area is uninteresting for their project. They might welcome your help if you are willing to count bears rather than magpies.
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