Abstract: Colonialism has devastated the lifeways, more-than-human relations, and collective stewardship practices of Indigenous people. Decolonial restoration may be assisted by collaborative methods like participatory modeling, but further careful evaluation is needed to ensure that these methods that have the potential to connect ways of knowing actually do secure long-term benefit for Indigenous life and land. In this study, we engage in a mixed-methods analysis to assess our participatory modeling of a Zimbabwean agropastoral system. The Muonde Trust, a community-based research organization, partnered with international researchers from outside the community to create an agent-based model (ABM) representing the dynamics of land use in Mazvihwa Communal Area, Zimbabwe. Using interviews and participant observation during modeling workshops, Muonde and their allies assessed the immediate increases in confidence and self-efficacy for members of the research team (during workshops), intermediate-term changes in local land-use policy and management discussions (months to years later), and long-term changes in on-the-ground land use (up to four years later). We find that the model successfully assisted the Muonde Trust in working with local leaders to create policies allowing recultivation of fallow fields rather than further deforesting woodland grazing areas. This success is due to the involvement of the community at key times in the modeling process, resulting in a model that felt accessible and that Muonde (as a key information broker) could use to bring the community together to discuss collective management. Though aspects of our process still relied on colonial tools and power structures, the community in Mazvihwa finds the model useful and feels ownership over it. Published on 2021-02-05 10:35:00
Abstract: In August of 2019, citizens from across the state of Georgia, USA, participated in the Great Georgia Pollinator Census (GGaPC). This University of Georgia Extension initiative recruited citizen scientists to count for 15 minutes the number and types of insects visiting pollinator plants. The project was web based and used multiple media strategies to recruit citizen scientists, to educate the participants on the entomology required, and to collect the data generated. WordPress website-building software allowed us to create the project website (GGaPC.org). This served as the center of the project as it contained project details and educational materials as well as the portal for uploading count data. The social media outlets Facebook and Instagram were used to promote the project and to provide insect identification and pollinator education, and social media memes were created easily using Canva software. MailChimp emailing services assisted us in providing educational e-newsletters and local counting event newsletters to participants and partners. The Zoom online meeting platform allowed our team to meet with partners and Extension offices across the state to share resources and to plan events. More than 4,600 counts were uploaded, documenting more than 131,000 insect visits tallied from 134 Georgia counties including 135 schools. Multimedia tools allowed us to conduct the project with limited personnel on a small budget while providing comprehensive participant education and an extensive project reach. Published on 2021-02-03 09:28:23
Abstract: This article uses the concept of boundaries (Akkerman and Bakker 2011) to explore why collaboration in citizen science is sometimes difficult. The case study focuses on collaboration between project organizers and project volunteers in a single citizen science project. The volunteers, from a regional botanical society, experienced boundaries between their group’s practices and the citizen science project organized by a natural history museum, despite similar ways of working. Organizers and volunteers responded to boundary experiences by defining their respective practices and suggesting how project activities could be coordinated across boundaries. Findings from this study support practitioners’ efforts to implement citizen science projects that result in positive outcomes for organizers and volunteers by revealing how participation in a community of practice, such as a botanical society, affects volunteers’ engagement in citizen science. Suggestions are made for how project designs can be responsive to volunteers’ boundary experiences. Published on 2020-12-31 09:17:05
Abstract: Marine Citizen Science (MCS) is highly underrepresented in the citizen science literature, despite the instrumental (data-focused) and capacity-building (society-focused) benefits such projects offer for marine conservation. Nevertheless, the MCS literature has experienced continual growth since its first publications in the early 1990s. Few reviews have considered the developing history of MCS, and none have considered recent developments in the field. By reviewing 185 MCS papers published from 2014–2018, this study examines recent developments in MCS and offers informed recommendations for future MCS projects. Over the five surveyed years, there were significant increasing trends in both MCS publication quantity and diversity of affiliated research countries, although many tropical study regions with high observation potential remained underrepresented. Sixty-eight percent (68%, N = 126) of surveyed MCS studies focused on non-emblematic study subjects versus thirty-two percent (32%, N = 59) of studies that focused on emblematic subjects (e.g., coral reefs, megafauna, and endangered/critically endangered species found on the Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN]), suggesting that the charismatic appeal of the scientific topic may not be a limiting factor to volunteer participation. Nearly 82% (N = 151) of studies failed to describe explicit hypotheses, and many studies utilizing novel data neglected to include descriptions of data quality assurance measures (25%, N = 47) in their reports, potentially fueling the credibility challenge, which citizen science research faces as a whole. Finally, only a small portion of studies (10%, N = 19) involved participants beyond mere data collection, despite the unique and diverse perspectives volunteers may bring to scientific research. Collectively, these results aid in forming a set of recommendations for future MCS projects seeking to improve the quality of their credibility, study design, and volunteer contributions through explicitly stating hypotheses/quality-insurance methods, considering the potential of non-emblematic study species/smartphone applications, and designing projects that allow for a spectrum of volunteer participation in high-observation potential areas. Published on 2020-11-30 08:22:14
Abstract: Citizen science is increasingly recognized as a valid research methodology by the research community and policy makers alike. In our experience, however, citizen science is sometimes used as a catchall term for activities that involve scientific and democratic innovation, resource efficiency in scientific processes, outreach, and education. We fear that this use of the term citizen science risks undermining the recognition of citizen science in academia as well as among citizen scientists and the general public in the longer term. Informed by these concerns, we report on a transdisciplinary attempt to establish quality criteria to decide in a transparent manner which citizen science projects are listed on Österreich forscht, an Austrian citizen science platform that is based on an established network of citizen scientists, academic researchers, funding institutions, and research institutions. We present 20 quality criteria and their relationship to existing literature, and describe the process by which they were formulated over a one-year period: a series of transdisciplinary exchanges, concerning what shape citizen science should take in the particular context of Austria, and the potential implications of certain quality criteria for individual disciplines and practitioners. While we realize that any demarcation process is bound to produce exclusionary effects, we argue that the bottom-up, transdisciplinary nature of our working group was a necessary step for Österreich forscht to strengthen its identity and purpose. Published on 2020-11-25 12:43:18
Abstract: Digital citizen science platforms are prominent examples of modern volunteerism that provide people with opportunities to observe natural phenomena and to engage in scientific processes. In this study, we explore the values and motivations underlying sustained participation in digital citizen science projects through the lenses of two social psychology theories (Schwartz’s Human Values Theory and Self-Determination Theory). We present in-depth analyses of interviews with 15 long-term volunteers in two digital citizen science initiatives (Järviwiki and Safecast) that have been collecting environmental data for a decade in Finland and Japan. Our results advance the understanding of the values underpinning motivations. Our analyses show that openness-to-change values, such as self-direction, are important for initial participation, yet a diverse range of values, except for power, play a role in sustaining participation. Our study also shows that the values related to sustained participation are linked with extrinsic motivations, suggesting that when extrinsic motivators are self-directed, people will not only perform tasks willingly and enthusiastically but also in a sustained manner. Conceptualizing the behavioral continuum that drives volunteering actions provides practical insights that can assist the design, development, and evaluation of digital citizen science platforms. Published on 2020-10-12 09:59:46
Abstract: Citizen science programs have been growing in popularity in recent years and can provide various benefits to participants and their communities. We sought to determine whether these benefits are equitably accessible to all by examining potential demographic disparities in participation in our statewide citizen science program. We first explored whether Illinois RiverWatch participants are demographically and geographically representative of Illinois’s population. We conducted online surveys of current participants to gather information on demographics, including race, income, and education level, and then compared these responses with the population of Illinois as a whole using (US) census data. We also examined whether RiverWatch stream sites are disproportionately located in areas of low environmental justice concern, as determined by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (US EPA’s) Environmental Justice screening tool. We used GIS to map all stream sites (n = 936) and determined whether they were located in areas of high or low environmental justice concern. The survey data indicate that RiverWatch participants are disproportionately white, highly educated, and affluent compared with the Illinois general population. In addition, we found RiverWatch sites tend to be located in areas of lower environmental justice concern, and that areas of high environmental justice concern are underrepresented. We discuss how disparities in demographics of participants can not only indicate need for improvement in the accessibility of a citizen science program but could also harm the quality of the river-monitoring data collected, as it leads to sampling that is not accurately representative. Published on 2020-10-07 10:36:29
Abstract: Citizen science projects are often undertaken for ecological and environmental research purposes but also have great potential for use in microbiology research to track the emergence and spread of pathogens in the environment. Science Solstice and Summer Soil-stice are mycology citizen science projects aimed at collecting air and soil samples, respectively, in the United Kingdom (UK), that will be used to culture Aspergillus fumigatus fungal spores and to determine their drug resistance. A. fumigatus plays an important role in the environment as a decomposer of plant material, but is also a human lung pathogen. Infection with drug-resistant spores can lead to a worse clinical outcome for the patient.On the four solstice and equinox days between June 2018 and March 2019, volunteers were asked to collect air samples from their homes and workplaces and return them to our lab in Freepost envelopes (UK only) or were reimbursed for postage if returning samples from outside of the UK. An additional round of samples was requested from UK volunteers’ gardens and/or compost on the June 2019 solstice. In total, 787 volunteers returned 2,132 air samples and 509 soil samples, which grew a total of 7,991 A. fumigatus colonies. The estimated total cost of the study was £2,650, the equivalent of £0.33 per A. fumigatus colony grown.Incorporating citizen science into the environmental surveillance of drug-resistant A. fumigatus allowed for the simultaneous collection of hundreds of environmental samples across the entire UK on the same day. The insights generated from this study would not be practical in the absence of public participation, which offers opportunities to ask scientific questions that were previously un-askable. Published on 2020-09-18 12:06:23
Abstract: Citizen science data can fundamentally advance the natural sciences, but concerns remain about its accuracy, reliability, and overall value. While some studies have evaluated accuracy of citizen science data, few have also assessed its potential contribution to conservation policy. This study focuses on rainfall data collection, with four goals: (1) to examine motivations of, and barriers for, volunteer participation in citizen science; (2) to evaluate accuracy of citizen science rainfall data in comparison to automatic rain gauge data; (3) to incorporate citizen science rainfall datasets into hydrological models; and (4) to apply the hydrologic model to gauge the contribution of citizen science data to the efficient design of payment for hydrological services (PHS) programs. Twelve citizen science volunteers were trained and collected rainfall data between June 2017 and February 2019 across two watersheds in Veracruz, Mexico. We found that these volunteers were highly motivated by conservation values and learning, while only a few volunteers faced barriers related to time availability for making daily measurements. The mean error in daily rainfall, computed by comparing the manual and automated gauge measurements, was less than 1 mm, or 12% of the average daily rainfall. Approximately one-third (29%) and two-thirds (71%) of the errors were attributed to missing data and misread data, respectively. Spatial patterns of rainfall distribution across the watersheds were similar between citizen science and automatic gauge data, revealing a large fraction of rainfall in middle elevations. Furthermore, the results show that if PHS areas are determined using the existing national rainfall network alone, without citizen science data, critical areas that contribute to dry-season flows would be missed. To our knowledge, this is the first citizen science network for collecting rainfall data in Mexico that has produced results that are relevant to conservation policy design. Published on 2020-09-07 11:02:21
Abstract: This article offers an assessment of current data practices in the citizen science, community science, and crowdsourcing communities. We begin by reviewing current trends in scientific data relevant to citizen science before presenting the results of our qualitative research. Following a purposive sampling scheme designed to capture data management practices from a wide range of initiatives through a landscape sampling methodology (Bos et al. 2007), we sampled 36 projects from English-speaking countries. The authors used a semi-structured protocol to interview project proponents (either scientific leads or data managers) to better understand how projects are addressing key aspects of the data lifecycle, reporting results through descriptive statistics and other analyses. Findings suggest that citizen science projects are doing well in terms of data quality assessment and governance, but are sometimes lacking in providing open access to data outputs, documenting data, ensuring interoperability through data standards, or building robust and sustainable infrastructure. Based on this assessment, the paper presents a number of recommendations for the citizen science community related to data quality, data infrastructure, data governance, data documentation, and data access. Published on 2020-09-04 10:36:07
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