The role of Citizen Science in conservation

In my last post, I mentioned citizen science as a good practice for conserving biodiversity. Citizen science, from a scientist' perspective (BBC, 2013), is a way to bring amateurs into research project. By its name it means the collaboration between science and public involvement. Personally I agree more with the second definition, as citizen science is a win-win strategy, which benefits not only scientific researchers and citizens, but also affects the environmental education and hence the overall outcomes of environmental policy making. An European Union study (EU, 2013) examines the quality and impact of citizen science initiatives in Europe, the accuracy of collected data, the potential of new technology (smart phone devices) and concluded that citizen science can benefit the policy making and environmental monitoring from different perspectives, and it is playing a more important role in the future with the advance of technology.

There are three types of citizen science project, contributory, collaborative, and co-created, depending on what percentage of the project is helped by the volunteers. The project designed by scientists is contributory citizen science projects, those designed by scientists and refined by volunteers are collaborative citizen science projects, and those co-designed by scientist and volunteers are co-created projects (Wentworth 2014). Wentworth also identifies the key advantages and challenges of citizen science project. The advantages include public engagement with science and policy, cost effectiveness, and improvement of productivity, and the challenges include the accuracy of data, data gaps, and the lack of incentives to maintain volunteer engagement.

This piece of infograph is a good introduction for citizen science. Citizen Science brings fun and education to citizens, and in return, citizen science brings data, paper and discovery to scientists. In the well-known citizen science example, GalaxyZoo brings 50 million classification by 150,000 people, and 60 papers used the Cornell Lab data collected by bird watchers. In UK, there are also a few brilliant citizen science projects that brings benefits to the whole community.

Projectsplatter is a project initiated by Cardiff University that collaborates citizen-collected roadkill data for scientific research. The research idea is that once a citizen saw a roadkill of wildlife, he can report the location and time to the lab by smartphone. The project team then made these data into a GIS map, and analyse the reasons behind the kill when necessary. A product from the citizen science collaboration can be found here. This project involves motivated individuals and animal-lovers to be keen participators.

OPAL (OpenAir Laboratories) is a UK-wide citizen science project led by Imperial College London, it takes experts to the local communities and local communities can participate into the research by contributing data to OPAL national surveys. It helps the public understanding of their community environment, and loss of local species by building a strong network between community and voluntary scientists. The following graph is an OPAL output that shows the result of national-wide 15min bug count challenge, which aims to identify the most common insects of UK.

There is a key element in the citizen science project that is always overlooked by scientists, the communication capacity of scientists to the public. Citizen science project requires strong communication skills of scientists, as their skills are directly linked to raising public interest and maintaining public concern. The charm and ability of the scientists influence the outcome of the citizen science project. Here I want to mention a few good scientific communication cases that appeals public interest. 

Nature Live talks is Natural History Museum programme that introduces the work of scientists in NHM to the public. It includes different presentation topics by researchers every day and encourages questions from the public. Last week, I attend a citizen science talk by Erica McAlister (twitter@flygilNHM), it uses the style of stand-up comedy to analyse the sexual behaviours of different insects and it attracts great public interest. It can be noticed that the feedback of audience is very positive and they all become interested in the project instantly. Another good scientific communication example is Soapbox programme by scientists of Zoological Society of London, it adopts the style of street performance to introduce basic bio-science and successfully attracted the interest of public. 

A successful citizen science project is meaningful and beneficial to research, public and society. Citizen science help ordinary people understand how science works through firsthand experience (Bonny et al, 2009). And citizen science combines science and policy together, bring the society closer to nature (Gollan et al, 2010). However, there are also voices saying citizen science is not real science as the accuracy is not enough. Some also argues citizen science is a new PR strategy of scientists. 

This article introduces citizen science project, the types of citizen science projects, advantages and citizen science projects, and also criticism. It also gives examples of applying citizen science on biodiversity conservation topics. With the further adoption of advanced technologies like smartphone and 4G network, the role of citizen science will be increasingly important.