Engaging Citizen Scientists Research Articles

Toowoomba Healthy Towns: A Citizen Science Initiative on Active Transport in Regional South East Queensland, Australia.

Engaging in active transport will enable individuals across the life course to increase their habitual levels of physical activity. The aim of this study was to engage citizen scientists (CS) to identify factors that influence active transport in their community. The Our Voice citizen science methodology developed at Stanford University was employed. CS completed a "discovery walk," taking photos of things that help or hinder active transport. Three groups were recruited: children aged 10-12years (n = 11), adults (n = 12), and older adults >65years (n = 10). CS rated each photo and provided a narrative explaining their reason for taking the photo. Once all CS in a specific age group had completed the walk, they met for a group discussion. The CS worked together to analyze the data, arranging them into themes and identifying priority actions. Two CS representatives from each age group presented their findings to the local council decision makers. Children highlighted the need for safer crossings, especially from their school to the local park, and suggested zebra crossings as a solution. The adults highlighted that road signs prioritized vehicles, not pedestrians, and requested that this be reversed. Older adults noted that the poor condition of the pavements made it harder for people in wheelchairs to navigate. The CS recommendations have informed the council's walking and cycling network program. Engaging with citizen science provided the community with an opportunity to advocate for meaningful yet realistic improvements in the built environment that could promote neighborhood active transport and physical activity across the lifespan.

Microplastic detectives: a citizen-science project reveals large variation in meso- and microplastic pollution along German coastlines

Plastic production and plastic waste have increased to such an extent that it has become globally ubiquitous. Several studies already have investigated the meso- and microplastic pollution along the German Baltic and North Sea coasts, but were all limited to a few locations. To obtain representative bulk samples from sandy beaches along the entire German coast, we initiated a citizen-science project entitled “Microplastic Detectives.” Here, we describe in detail 1) how we recruited, instructed, and engaged citizen scientists, 2) why we chose bulk sampling over reduced-volume sampling, and 3) the laboratory methods we used. The citizen scientists collected 1,139 samples from 71 locations along the German coast, totalling 2.2 tons of sand. After drying, sieving with a 1 mm sieve, and visual inspection of the retained fraction under a binocular microscope, all putative plastic particles ≥1 mm were analysed by attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy. 177 out of 1,139 samples (15.5%) contained a total of 260 plastic particles, with a large right-skewed variation among locations. Most of the particles were fragments, foils, foams, fibres, and pellets (96.2% in total), and 89.6% of the particles were made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, and polystyrene. The unweighted mean pollution densities were 4.12 particles m−2, 0.17 particles kg−1 and 0.27 particles L−1, and the weighted mean pollution densities were 3.77 particles m−2, 0.11 particles kg−1 and 0.18 particles L−1. These densities are lower than in other similar studies, but previous studies had important methodological differences. We discuss how these differences could have influenced the results and make recommendations for improving future studies. Two important recommendations are 1) to use random or stratified random sampling and 2) to run transects perpendicular (rather than parallel) to the waterline. Our study highlights that large-scale, scientifically rigorous monitoring of meso- and microplastic pollution is possible at the national level, and possibly even at much larger spatial and temporal scales. With the help of local authorities, such a monitoring program could be established.

A Model for Engaging Citizen Scientists: A Community-Partnered Research Collaboration to Address Inequities for Black Birthing People.

Co-creation of a citizen-science research initiative with a collaborative team of community members and university-based scientists to address regional disparities in maternal and fetal health outcomes for Black birthing people. Citizen scientist-led projects, where community members actively contribute to each discovery step, from setting a research agenda to collecting data and disseminating results, can extend community participatory research initiatives and help reconceptualize traditional research processes. The Pregnancy Collaborative is a citizen-science research initiative and one of nine scientific committees of The Pittsburgh Study-a longitudinal, community-partnered study designed to bring together collaborators to improve child thriving. Ten community members and five university-based scientists participated during all phases of developing a citizen-scientist collaboration over an initial two-and-a-half-year period. Phases include forming the Pregnancy Collaborative and group research ethics training; co-creating a research agenda grounded in shared principles; and community-partnered data collection, analysis, and dissemination. These phases produced three key co-designed products: (1) a mission and vision statement of the Pregnancy Collaborative, (2) a Collaborative-endorsed research agenda, and (3) a citizen-scientist-executed research survey. Lessons learned from the formation of the Pregnancy Collaborative highlight the importance of equitable power distribution through bidirectional knowledge sharing and by centering intellectual effort, lived experience, and tools and resources of those affected by health inequities. Using a citizen science approach to co-designing and executing research helps us move maternal health inequity work from "research on" to "research with."

1 Million Turtles: empowering communities to save Australian freshwater turtles

ABSTRACT Australian freshwater turtle populations have declined substantially, with consequent losses to aquatic ecosystem functions. A leading hypothesis is that turtles have declined through lost recruitment caused by high nest predation by invasive foxes. The ‘fox hypothesis’ is supported by experiments showing that nest predation rates exceed 95% in many regions. Furthermore, population surveys have repeatedly found absences of juvenile turtles, and headstarting experiments have successfully replaced those juveniles in some species. We are currently leading a nationwide citizen science program, ‘1 Million Turtles’ (1millionturtles.com), to engage local communities to protect turtles from threats like nest predation using a suite of novel approaches. Our key innovation is to leverage community passion and interest for turtles to create positive conservation impacts via a nationwide support network. We provide a data collection tool and framework (TurtleSAT) and self-guided training in conservation methods. We assist with guidance for gaining licencing and permission, and applying for grants. We are evaluating our approach through both the impacts on turtle populations as well as through surveys of our engaged citizen scientists. Ultimately, we aim to create a science-supported, national grassroots conservation model where community champions can lead their own evidence-based approaches to help wildlife.

The Efficacy of Social Media Communication in Engaging Citizen Scientists: Insights From the Jozi Bee Hotel Project

The Jozi Bee Hotel Project recruited Johannesburg residents to help gather data on solitary bee abundance. They were motivated and guided by a strategic communications campaign. This study explores social media’s impact on the citizen scientists’ project involvement, particularly their interaction with visual elements of the communications campaign. Analysis of engagement metrics reveals that social media played a crucial role in sustaining volunteer participation. This demonstrates that a well-executed, ongoing social media campaign has the power to maintain participant engagement throughout the duration of a research project. It suggests that a consistent, long-term social media strategy can drive citizen science participation.

Engaging Citizen Scientists in Biodiversity Monitoring: Insights from the WildLIVE! Project

The growing public interest in biodiversity monitoring has led to a significant increase in initiatives that unite citizen scientists, researchers, and machine learning technologies. In this context, we introduce WildLIVE!, a dynamic biomonitoring and citizen science project. In WildLIVE!, participants analyze a vast array of images from a long-term camera trapping project in Bolivia to investigate the impacts of shifting environmental factors on wildlife. From 2020 to 2023, more than 850 participants registered for WildLIVE!, contributing nearly 9,000 hours of voluntary work. We explore the motivators and sentiments of participant engagement and discuss the key strategies that have contributed to the project’s initial success. The findings from a questionnaire highlight that the primary motivational factors for our participants are understanding and knowledge, as well as engagement and commitment. However, expressions of positive and negative sentiments can be found regarding involvement. Participants appeared to be driven primarily by a desire for intellectual growth and emotional fulfillment. Factors crucial to the success of this digital citizen science project include media exposure, creating emotional connections through virtual and in-person communication with participants, and visibility on public citizen science portals. Moreover, the project’s labeled dataset serves as a valuable resource for machine learning, aiding the development of a new platform that is compliant with the FAIR principles. WildLIVE! not only contributes to outcomes in science, society, and nature conservation, but also demonstrates the potential of creating a collaborative bridge between the general public, scientific research, biodiversity conservation, and advanced technological applications.

The International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC)—Citizen Scientist System for Asteroid Discovery

We describe a citizen science asteroid detection system developed by the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) and the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, utilizing data from the Pan-STARRS telescopes. The goals of this project are to (i) educate and engage citizen scientists (mostly high school students) in science and astronomy, (ii) search for new asteroids to extend the limiting magnitudes of existing asteroid surveys, and (iii) find missed Near-Earth Objects (NEOs—objects with perihelia q < 1.3 au) to support planetary defense efforts. Over the past 15 yr, 50,000 citizen scientists from 96 countries around the world have detected ∼12,000 main-belt asteroids and ∼5 NEOs. Citizen scientists use the software Astrometrica during scheduled campaigns to search for and measure asteroid astrometry and photometry, and submit the data to IASC for vetting. Candidate detections not already submitted by Pan-STARRS are then submitted to the Minor Planet Center, and are typically ∼0.30 ± 0.07 mag fainter.

Responsibilities of geographers: Are we role models or hypocrites?

AbstractIt is no longer enough, if it ever was, for geographers to publish research with no mind to practising it in their daily lives. This essay is quasi‐polemical, calling for us to consider both our responsibilities as geographers and our futures outside of research and to more consciously think about how to be role models of our discipline in both our professional and private lives. Such labours include asking how we can act sustainably in hosting, travelling to, and catering for conferences and how we can address our need to help build community and accommodate diversity, which are often present in calls to action in our research. Acknowledging the potential for hypocrisy also means being engaged citizen scientists and Anthropoceneans. Let us start a conversation: are we only communicators, or can we be role models, too?

Traditional surveys versus ecological momentary assessments: Digital citizen science approaches to improve ethical physical activity surveillance among youth.

The role of physical activity (PA) in minimizing non-communicable diseases is well established. Measurement bias can be reduced via ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) deployed via citizen-owned smartphones. This study aims to engage citizen scientists to understand how PA reported digitally by retrospective and prospective measures varies within the same cohort. This study used the digital citizen science approach to collaborate with citizen scientists, aged 13-21 years over eight consecutive days via a custom-built app. Citizen scientists were recruited through schools in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 2018 (August 31-December 31). Retrospective PA was assessed through a survey, which was adapted from three validated PA surveys to suit smartphone-based data collection, and prospective PA was assessed through time-triggered EMAs deployed consecutively every day, from day 1 to day 8, including weekdays and weekends. Data analyses included paired t-tests to understand the difference in PA reported retrospectively and prospectively, and linear regressions to assess contextual and demographic factors associated with PA reported retrospectively and prospectively. Findings showed a significant difference between PA reported retrospectively and prospectively (p = 0.001). Ethnicity (visible minorities: β = - 0.911, 95% C.I. = -1.677, -0.146), parental education (university: β = 0.978, 95% C.I. = 0.308, 1.649), and strength training (at least one day: β = 0.932, 95% C.I. = 0.108, 1.755) were associated with PA reported prospectively. In contrast, the number of active friends (at least one friend: β = 0.741, 95% C.I. = 0.026, 1.458) was associated with retrospective PA. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of mortality globally, which requires accurate monitoring to inform population health interventions. In this digital age, where ubiquitous devices provide real-time engagement capabilities, digital citizen science can transform how we measure behaviours using citizen-owned ubiquitous digital tools to support prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases.

Citizen scientists reveal small but concentrated amounts of fragmented microplastic on Arctic beaches

Plastic production and plastic waste have increased to such an extent that it has become globally ubiquitous. Recent research has highlighted that it has also invaded remote Polar Regions including the Arctic, where it is expected to accumulate over time due to transport from distant sources, rising local anthropogenic activities and increasing fragmentation of existing ocean plastics to microplastics (plastic items &amp;lt;5 mm). While a growing body of research has documented microplastics in the atmosphere, cryosphere, sea surface, water column, sediments and biota, contamination levels on Arctic beaches are poorly known. To fill this knowledge gap, we engaged citizen scientists participating in tourist cruises to sample beach sediments during shore visits on Svalbard, Norway. Following drying, sieving, and visual inspection of samples under a binocular microscope, putative plastic particles ≥1 mm were analysed by attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy. Plastic particles ≥1 mm were found in two out of 53 samples from 23 beaches (mean: 196.3 particles kg−1 and 147.4 particles L−1). These pollution levels could be due to our focus on plastic particles ≥1 mm as well as the relatively small sample sizes used during this initial phase of the project. In addition, the coarse substrate on most beaches might retain fewer plastic particles. The two samples with plastic particles ≥1 mm contained six polyester-epoxide particles and 4920 polypropylene fibres. The latter likely originated from a fishing net and points to possibly accelerated plastic fragmentation processes on Arctic beaches. Since fisheries-related debris is an important source of plastic on Svalbard, a build-up of microplastic quantities can be expected to burden Arctic ecosystems in addition to climate change unless efficient upstream action is taken to combat plastic pollution.

Science communication is integral to attracting widespread participation in bushfire recovery citizen science

The 2019/20 bushfire season was a catastrophic event affecting large areas of Australia. Due to the devastating impact on biodiversity, the Australian public wanted to contribute towards assessing the impact of this disaster. To address this, three citizen science projects were established to engage citizen scientists in various aspects of environmental recovery. The projects offered different ways of participating, ranging from online, through to community field events, including those requiring specialised localised knowledge. As a result, communication approaches targeting different audiences were required. Here, we detail the communication strategies employed to promote and engage a diverse national and global audience in bushfire recovery projects. We provide metrics and analysis on how and where we promoted projects, including a breakdown of participation numbers for each project. We detail lessons learnt, and how we would improve our communication approach for future disaster recovery events to increase awareness at a community level and more broadly. Despite numerous challenges, including organising public-facing events during a global pandemic, the program serves as an exemplar of how to successfully partner with communities, research teams and government to enable citizen scientists to make meaningful, valuable and timely contributions to research. Ultimately, the program enabled widespread community involvement in bushfire recovery and filled gaps in baseline and post-fire data.

A citizen science approach to investigate the distribution, abundance, and pathogen infection of vector ticks through active surveillance

Tick-borne disease poses a growing public health burden in the United States and understanding the patterns of presence and density of infected vector ticks is key to developing and implementing effective public health management strategies. Citizen science has emerged as a highly effective means to generate data sets on the geographical distribution of tick species. But to date, nearly all citizen science studies of ticks are ‘passive surveillance’ programs in which researchers accept reports of ticks, together with either physical specimens or digital images, found opportunistically on people, pets, and livestock from community members for species identification and in some cases also tick-borne pathogen detection. These studies are limited because data are not collected systematically, making comparisons among locations and over time challenging, and introducing considerable reporting bias. In this study, we engaged citizen scientists in ‘active surveillance’ of host-seeking ticks, training volunteers to actively collect ticks on their woodland properties in an emergent region of tick-borne disease in the state of Maine, USA. We developed volunteer recruitment strategies, materials to train volunteers in data collection methods, field data collection protocols based on techniques used by professional scientists, and a variety of incentives to promote volunteer retention and satisfaction with their experiences, and we communicated research findings to participants. A total of 125 volunteers in 2020 and 181 volunteers in 2021 collected 7,246 ticks in southern and coastal Maine, including the American dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis, 4,023 specimens), the blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis, 3,092 specimens), and the rabbit tick (Haemaphysalis leporispalustris, 102 specimens). We demonstrated the feasibility of citizen scientists collecting ticks using active surveillance methods and found that volunteers were motivated to participate largely by their interest in the scientific problem and a desire to learn about ticks on their properties.

Citizen Science for Water Quality Monitoring in the Meki River, Ethiopia: Quality Assurance and Comparison with Conventional Methods

A lack of water quality information for many water bodies around the world makes it difficult to identify global change and discover early signs of myriad threats to freshwater resources. This problem is widely seen in Ethiopia due to absence of regular monitoring. Citizen science has a great potential to fill these gaps in water quality data, but there is concern about the accuracy of data collected by citizen scientists. Moreover, there is a gap to engage citizen scientists in water quality monitoring, and there is still insufficient awareness of how citizen scientists can become part of a collaborative scheme. This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of water quality collected by citizen scientists and characterize the water quality of the Meki River with the involvement of citizen scientists. The suitability of the river water for irrigation was evaluated using a combination of citizen science and conventional water quality data collection methods. Water temperature, turbidity, ammonia, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, total alkalinity, total hardness, and pH were analyzed by both citizen scientists and in a conventional laboratory. The citizen scientists’ data, expressed as percent of synthetic standard solution concentrations, indicated good agreement for selected water quality parameters: 123.8 ± 24.7% for PO43−, 115.6 ± 6.3% for NO3−, 105.8 ± 7.4% for pH, and 133.3 ± 23.6% for NH4+. Thus, citizen scientists can monitor and collect water quality data accurately. From the results, the Meki River water can be used for irrigation, but pollution sources should be controlled to reduce further quality deterioration as the population increases.

The "Our Voice" Method: Participatory Action Citizen Science Research to Advance Behavioral Health and Health Equity Outcomes.

Citizen science research that more fully engages the community can systematically involve people from under-resourced groups to create practical health-enhancing improvements across physical, social and food environments. Exemplary health equity-focused outcomes include key health behaviors (e.g., healthy eating or physical activity) and community-level changes (e.g., public transit to food shops) that are central to health promotion while being demonstrably impacted by local environmental contexts. Yet, few examples of this approach are readily available for application within complex, community-based settings. In this paper, we present the Our Voice (OV) four-step method to demonstrate an integrated participatory citizen science approach and its usability for action-focused researchers and community health practitioners. In addition, we present a summary of the major research, processes, and community outcomes, with examples drawn from nutrition and healthy food access areas, among others. Finally, we explore the hallmark features of the OV method that effectively engage citizen scientists, empowering action and fostering solution-building across social and environmental structures impacting community health. Expanding research that marries participatory research philosophies with innovative citizen science methods, supported by systematic data collection, visualization, and delivery technologies, in turn provides a powerful toolkit for tackling local to global health equity challenges.

Antipredator behaviors in urban settings: Ecological experimentation powered by citizen science.

Animal behaviors are often modified in urban settings due to changes in species assemblages and interactions. The ability of prey to respond to a predator is a critical behavior, but urban populations may experience altered predation pressure, food supplementation, and other human‐mediated disturbances that modify their responsiveness to predation risk and promote habituation.Citizen‐science programs generally focus on the collection and analysis of observational data (e.g., bird checklists), but there has been increasing interest in the engagement of citizen scientists for ecological experimentation.Our goal was to implement a behavioral experiment in which citizen scientists recorded antipredator behaviors in wild birds occupying urban areas. In North America, increasing populations of Accipiter hawks have colonized suburban and urban areas and regularly prey upon birds that frequent backyard bird feeders. This scenario, of an increasingly common avian predator hunting birds near human dwellings, offers a unique opportunity to characterize antipredator behaviors within urban passerines.For two winters, we engaged citizen scientists in Chicago, IL, USA to deploy a playback experiment and record antipredator behaviors in backyard birds. If backyard birds maintained their antipredator behaviors, we hypothesized that birds would decrease foraging behaviors and increase vigilance in response to a predator cue (hawk playback) but that these responses would be mediated by flock size, presence of sentinel species, body size, tree cover, and amount of surrounding urban area.Using a randomized control–treatment design, citizen scientists at 15 sites recorded behaviors from 3891 individual birds representing 22 species. Birds were more vigilant and foraged less during the playback of a hawk call, and these responses were strongest for individuals within larger flocks and weakest in larger‐bodied birds. We did not find effects of sentinel species, tree cover, or urbanization.By deploying a behavioral experiment, we found that backyard birds inhabiting urban landscapes largely maintained antipredator behaviors of increased vigilance and decreased foraging in response to predator cues. Experimentation in citizen science poses challenges (e.g., observation bias, sample size limitations, and reduced complexity in protocol design), but unlike programs focused solely on observational data, experimentation allows researchers to disentangle the complex factors underlying animal behavior and species interactions.

Crowd-sourced SfM: Best practices for high resolution monitoring of coastal cliffs and bluffs

Structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry is an increasingly common technique for measuring landscape change over time by deriving 3D point clouds and surface models from overlapping photographs. Traditional change detection approaches require photos that are geotagged with a differential GPS (DGPS) location, which requires expensive equipment that can limit the ability of communities and researchers to perform frequent (i.e. daily, weekly, and/or monthly) surveys. Crowd-sourced photos can lower the barrier to entry and substantially increase the frequency of surveys, although such photos often lack accurate location information and can vary in quality. This paper presents a SfM approach for monitoring environmental change in high relief coastal environments that does not require all photos have DGPS location information and does not require field survey data. A 1.5 km section of coastal bluffs near the Elwha River Delta (Washington state) is used to demonstrate the efficacy of this approach. Photos of the bluff were collected with a digital SLR camera or phone camera while either on foot along the beach or from a boat as part of monitoring following removal of two large dams along the Elwha River during 2011–2013. Only 33% of photos had DGPS location information, whereas most photos had no location information or locations that were accurate to a couple of meters. All photos were processed using 3D, 4D, and fixed-floating (FF) SfM alignment methods and the resulting dense point clouds are used to compare the different alignment approaches with crowd-sourced photo sets. Results demonstrate that 4D and FF approaches are more likely to reconstruct and are more accurate than the 3D approach. While the 4D and FF have comparable accuracies, the FF approach is several orders of magnitude more efficient, as this method can leverage camera location information from relatively few photos to improve the accuracy of all aligned and derived products. Effectively utilizing crowd-sourced photos in SfM change detection can improve the frequency of surveying a landscape in a more cost-effective approach that also has potential for citizen-science engagement and communication. This is especially important for data-poor environments such as high-relief coastal cliffs and bluffs, where near-nadir imagery and LIDAR may fail to accurately capture near-vertical cliffs or bluff faces. Based on the analysis of different photo alignment and filtering approaches, we present suggested best practices for engaging citizen scientists in coastal cliff and bluff monitoring efforts through collecting photos amenable for SfM reconstruction.

First landscape-scale survey of the background level of COVID-19 face mask litter: Exploring the potential for citizen science data collection during a ‘pollution pilgrimage’ of walking a 250-km roadside transect

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a global problem through the cavalier or deliberate disposal of personal protective equipment (PPE) by the general public. This has raised concerns that the billions of discarded face masks pose a threat to wildlife through entanglement or, when broken down, through ingestion of derived microplastics. Previous quantitative surveys of the magnitude of such litter have focused on areas where people congregate, such as tourist beaches and large cities. The present survey is the first to provide data on the background level of face mask litter through a landscape of variable land-use. A 250-km transect along an historic road between Montreal and Quebec City (Canada) was surveyed during a walking pilgrimage, revealing an overall density of 0.0001 ± 0.00006 face masks m−2. Average densities were significantly higher in areas of human occupation compared to agricultural and forested rural land. However, there was no significant correlation between population size of communities and the number of face masks encountered, nor in litter extent and proximity to municipalities. This may be due to the confounding influence of inter-community differences in scheduled street cleaning operations. Seventy-six percent of face masks were of the disposable surgical variety, with the remaining 24% being reusable cloth masks. This, and the fact that only 10% of the former and none of the latter exhibited broken ear straps, insinuates that the litter could be due to accidental loss rather than inappropriate discarding by individuals en route. Scaling-up these findings in relation to the global road network generates a preliminary background estimate for roadside litter of >17 million face masks. The present study endorses the call made by others to engage citizen scientists in surveying PPE litter, in particular, the thousands who each year walk the medieval pilgrimage routes through the landscape of Europe.

Comparing in situ spring phenology and satellite-derived start of season at rural and urban sites in Ireland

ABSTRACT The timing of spring phenology marks the start of the growing season and the beginning of the carbon-uptake period. In order to accurately calculate carbon budgets across different vegetation types, reliable start-of-season data over relatively large areas is necessary. However, in-situ phenological observation networks are generally restricted in their geographical extent and limited to a small number of species, typically dominant trees. Satellite remote sensing can provide spatially extensive phenological information but requires validation with in-situ observations. Here, we examined trends (1968–2016) in the timing of leaf-unfolding (LU) as well as growing-season-length (GSL), derived from in-situ observations, of a suite of deciduous trees, at three rural sites and one urban site in Ireland, all of which are within the International Phenological Gardens network. We compared in-situ trends with satellite derived phenometrics, including start of greening increase and GSL, based on two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI2) from a combined AVHRR and MODIS time-series over the time period 1982–2016. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of satellite remote sensing in capturing LU and GSL as determined by in-situ observations from sites dominated by varying land cover types. The timing of LU (DOY 111) at the urban site was significantly (p < 0.000) later than all rural sites, apart from one (1982–2016). The significantly (p < 0.000) longer (2–5 weeks) GSL (217 days), at the urban site, was thus driven by delayed leaf fall (LF). Satellite derived Start of Season (SOS) was consistently earlier than LU across all sites (RMSE 25–52d; MBE −5 to −50 d) whereas EVI2-derived GSL was consistently longer than in situ data (RMSE 65–102d; MBE 45 to 96 d). Overall, the discrepancies reported here between the timing of in-situ spring phenology and satellite-derived phenometrics at these sites were possibly due to a combination of factors including differences in scale between the two methods, the small number of cloned trees being monitored, which does not appear to represent the broader landscape vegetation, the heterogeneity of the landscape and technical differences between the satellite sensors used to construct the EVI2 time-series. Addressing these issues is challenging but engaging citizen scientists to monitor local vegetation would increase the spatial coverage of the in-situ observation network while also incorporating a broader range of species some of which would undoubtedly represent native vegetation.

Where to start? A new citizen science, remote sensing approach to map recreational disturbance and other degraded areas for restoration planning

This UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration highlights the capacity of restoration to mitigate trends in biodiversity loss and land degradation. However, many managers lack the tools they need to systematically and comprehensively identify degraded sites to prioritize restoration efforts given limited resources. We developed a novel, inexpensive, low‐tech approach for training and engaging citizen scientists to identify recreational impacts and other degraded areas within a defined unforested area. The mapping process follows four phases: (1) Landscape scans by citizen scientists using Google Earth Pro imagery; (2) A second scan of all marked sites based on high resolution aerial photography; (3) Compilation of basic information about the degraded sites; (4) Addition of associated soil type and plant communities. In the 12,375 ha McDowell Sonoran Preserve (Scottsdale, Arizona), we detected 67 new sites not previously identified by land managers, using an estimated 305 citizen scientist hours and only 30 staff hours. Each site has accompanying information including distance from nearest access point, cause of degradation, and plant and soils detail. After completion, we conducted independent field visits of 33% of the detected sites and verified degradation in all cases. We found that the remotely sensed approach provided better perspective to accurately measure the scale and original source of degradation compared with field visits. The approach can be conducted over a short period of time using citizen scientists, allows managers to undertake landscape level restoration prioritization and planning, and, if repeated, can be used to monitor changes in degradation and restoration over time.

Sensing storm surge: A framework for establishing a citizen scientist monitored water level network

Storm surges and extreme water levels are notably more unpredictable in estuaries that are inland from the immediate coast. Estuarine water level data is often non-existent or coarse in resolution, making concrete physical science studies on the data difficult to conduct. Often, communities abutting estuaries have insufficient data to inform coastal zone managers on flood risk, creating uncertainty in planning and adaptation strategies. This study presents a framework for communities to build a citizen science water level monitoring network in estuaries using technical sensors that yield quantitative data helpful for researchers and local stakeholders. The framework provides guidance for establishing a volunteer storm surge monitoring network, how the network functions, and how to use these data. We detail lessons learned applying this framework via a case study in Maine, a state noted for its long shoreline, which is mainly estuarine in nature, where a citizen science network was established to collect bulk water level measurements in four different estuaries. With these data, storm surges were calculated in each estuary allowing local community managers access to extreme water level data for their area. This is one of the first studies reporting on how an environmental monitoring tool was developed, deployed, and used to engage citizen scientists and produce quality data useable in peer-reviewed coastal oceanography journals. Ultimately, the methods outlined in this study can be used and improved in similar projects elsewhere, creating a means for coastal planners and researchers to work together in solving mutual problems and building “smart communities”.