Elsevier

Biological Conservation

Volume 208, April 2017, Pages 15-28
Biological Conservation

Citizen science can improve conservation science, natural resource management, and environmental protection

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.05.015Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Citizen science can improve conservation efforts by building scientific knowledge.

  • It can also improve conservation efforts by encouraging public action.

  • Project design must match the needs for science and public involvement.

  • Citizen science is a powerful tool for tackling conservation challenges.

Abstract

Citizen science has advanced science for hundreds of years, contributed to many peer-reviewed articles, and informed land management decisions and policies across the United States. Over the last 10 years, citizen science has grown immensely in the United States and many other countries. Here, we show how citizen science is a powerful tool for tackling many of the challenges faced in the field of conservation biology. We describe the two interwoven paths by which citizen science can improve conservation efforts, natural resource management, and environmental protection. The first path includes building scientific knowledge, while the other path involves informing policy and encouraging public action. We explore how citizen science is currently used and describe the investments needed to create a citizen science program. We find that:

  • 1.

    Citizen science already contributes substantially to many domains of science, including conservation, natural resource, and environmental science. Citizen science informs natural resource management, environmental protection, and policymaking and fosters public input and engagement.

  • 2.

    Many types of projects can benefit from citizen science, but one must be careful to match the needs for science and public involvement with the right type of citizen science project and the right method of public participation.

  • 3.

    Citizen science is a rigorous process of scientific discovery, indistinguishable from conventional science apart from the participation of volunteers. When properly designed, carried out, and evaluated, citizen science can provide sound science, efficiently generate high-quality data, and help solve problems.

Introduction

The enormous scale and complexity of current environmental problems pose serious challenges for the fields of conservation biology, natural resource management, and environmental protection. Citizen science offers a powerful tool for tackling these challenges.

The challenges are immense. The biological and physical systems of our planet are undergoing rapid rates of change as the impact of human activities becomes nearly ubiquitous (Pimm and Raven, 2000, Steffen et al., 2011). Stressors like urbanization, deforestation, land conversion to agriculture, and climate change strain the capacity of natural systems to sustain life and threaten the persistence of many species (Dirzo et al., 2014, McCauley et al., 2015, Pimm and Raven, 2000, Steffen et al., 2011). Extinction rates might be as high as 100 to 1000 times greater than pre-human levels (Pimm et al., 1995), and these bleak estimates may be too low if unidentified species disappear before they are discovered (Scheffers et al., 2012).

Yet cataloguing even a fraction of the unknown diversity is ambitious (Carbayo and Marques, 2011). Conservation strategies require knowledge of species distributions, but even well-known species can have poorly resolved geographic ranges (Jetz et al., 2012) that can shift in response to climate change (Chen et al., 2011). Moreover, successful conservation efforts must focus on more than ecological dynamics and address the social, cultural, and political factors that affect natural ecosystems (e.g., Balmford and Cowling, 2006, Mascia et al., 2003). To be effective, conservation efforts must also incorporate public input and engagement in crafting solutions (Eden, 1996, Germain et al., 2001, Steelman, 2001).

We describe here how citizen science can improve conservation outcomes by building scientific knowledge, informing policy formulation, and inspiring public action. We focus on the United States, but many of our findings are relevant to other countries with similar systems of governance. We start by describing citizen science and discussing how it can help to address major conservation challenges. We then describe the value and limitations of citizen science for meeting core scientific needs, as well as the value and limitations of citizens for promoting public input and engagement in conservation. We end by discussing the investments that citizen science requires.

Our goal is to help people involved in conservation science and decisionmaking, natural resource management, and environmental protection (1) decide whether citizen science will help them meet their science and/or public input and engagement needs, and (2) make informed decisions about investing in citizen science. We aim to provide a balanced assessment of whether, when, and how to employ citizen science to help meet information and public engagement needs.

Section snippets

Methods

We assembled a team of citizen science experts and practitioners from multiple federal and state agencies, universities, and non-governmental organizations. Individuals on the team have many years of experience designing, managing, and evaluating citizen science projects from across the United States. We also represent many different perspectives and take different approaches to studying and using citizen science in research, education, and management applications.

Our team of coauthors was

What is citizen science?

Citizen science means different things to different people, causing confusion about its nature and utility. We define the term as the practice of engaging the public in a scientific project—a project that produces reliable data and information usable by scientists, decisionmakers, or the public and that is open to the same system of peer review that applies to conventional science. The public can also contribute to science through crowdsourcing, a practice that typically involves large numbers

Conclusions

Although humans have triggered the current conservation and environmental crises, we also possess the capacity to discover, innovate, and act for a more sustainable future. Engaging greater numbers of people in science can increase our understanding of Earth's systems and find culturally and politically feasible solutions to problems. Citizen science is not a panacea, and further research is needed to better understand how citizen science can build understanding and deliver positive outcomes.

Acknowledgments

Funding for this project was provided by Cooperative Agreement 12-CA-11221633-096 between the U.S. Forest Service and the Ecological Society of America (ESA). The National Park Service and the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park provided other funding and services. We would like to thank Kevin Bryan at the Meridian Institute for facilitating the workshops. We also thank Cliff Duke, Jennifer Riem, and Jill Parsons at ESA for logistical support. The views expressed in this paper do not

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