Citizen Science is a growing phenomenon and a hot topic currently in European science policy. But what is Citizen Science? Does it go beyond outreach and engagement with citizens? Can it deliver new insights and improved research outcomes? Several COST Actions are already investigating the potential of citizen science and others are using it within their work programmes to broaden their input.
COST Action ‘Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe (Citizen Science)’ has recently published a book on the subject following its four-year investigation into the citizen science landscape across Europe.
The main objective of the Action, which commenced its work in 2016, was to build a research network to promote the untapped potential for social innovation and socio-ecological transition represented by citizen science initiatives. This was achieved through linking existing research capacities across Europe, investigating and extending the impact of citizen science, and including stakeholders from the vast range of sectors involved ranging from policy makers and social innovators to cultural organizations, researchers, charities and non-governmental organizations.
What is citizen science?
Citizen science broadly refers to the active engagement of the public in scientific research tasks. Although active collaborations between citizens and researchers is a growing practice today, one could argue that ‘citizen science’ is older than science itself. Observation of the natural world and using those observations to improve our lives and wellbeing lies at the heart of human civilisation.
The relatively recent professionalisation of science had, to a large extent, excluded or marginalised input from public science enthusiasts, but the term ‘citizen science’ was coined in the 1990s and has since gained popularity and recognition.
In particular, citizen science is growing in the fields of science, policy, and education and is establishing itself as a field of research and a field of practice. This increases the need for overarching insights, standards, a common vocabulary, and guidelines. There are also ethical issues to address: although the concept of making scientific research more open to public participation is clearly a positive move, it is important to ensure that it is inclusive and open to all citizens, while avoiding any exploitation.
Practical application
Citizen science is having an impact across all aspects of the physical and social sciences and the humanities. On Zooniverse – the world’s largest and most popular platform for “people-powered research” – anyone can get involved and contribute to projects from history to language and medicine to physics and astronomy. The platform has already allowed more than a million people around the world to assist professional researchers and enable research that otherwise would not be possible or practical.
One COST Action that has also embraced citizen science is the Action ‘Increasing understanding of alien species through citizen science’. The spread of many invasive alien species is increasing worldwide. Alien species are non-native animals or plants that have been introduced to a new territory deliberately or accidentally and often have a dramatic negative impact on native flora and fauna.
It is estimated that some 14,000 alien or non-native species have been introduced into Europe. Some of these species threaten European biodiversity, societies, economies or human health with a cost to Europe estimated at €12.5-€20 billion.
There are many challenges to gathering coherent and consistent information on these alien species. However, the growth of citizen science provides an opportunity to improve the data flow while also ensuring effective and high-quality societal engagement on this important issue.
Advances in technology, particularly on-line recording and the use of smartphone apps, along with the development of social media, have revolutionized how data collected by citizen scientists can be connected and analysed. The Action used these developments to implement citizen science to advance our understanding of alien species dynamics that can inform decision-making with a direct impact on EU biodiversity policies.
The Action has established a European-wide citizen science network for documenting alien species that embraces innovative data gathering and reporting. This has helped to increase participation and the quality of engagement with citizens and improved the value of the research outcomes.
BioBlitz and lakes
An example of the initiatives promoted by the Action is the Akrotiri ‘BioBlitz’ organised in Cyprus in February 2019. The Akrotiri wetland is a well-known European biodiversity hotspot threatened by invasive alien species.
The BioBlitz was conducted during the first annual meeting of the Action at the Akrotiri Environmental Education Centre and attracted some 90 international experts from 37 countries from Europe and beyond.
BioBlitzes are mass biodiversity recording events that are common in the US and are becoming increasingly popular in Europe. The Akrotiri event was the first time that such an event took place in Cyprus and saw the experts working collaboratively with local citizens to comprehensively record the wildlife of the largest wetland complex in Cyprus.
By teaming with experts in invasion ecology, citizens were able to help observe and identify species and their impacts while discussing how management options for the area could be improved and encouraging more of the public to participate.
Another COST Action that has embraced citizen science is ‘Networking Lake Observatories in Europe (NETLAKE)’. Lakes represent important resources within Europe, providing drinking water, hydroelectric power, flood control, recreation and fisheries amongst other benefits. Following developments in sensor technology and increased connectivity it is now possible for monitoring data of lakes and reservoirs to be provided to local end-users over the internet. The information acquired by these systems is currently reviewed on a site-by-site basis, but an even greater potential for improved water resource management lies in the integration of data from many sites into a European network.
Barriers to the development of a network include a lack of information on the number of sites currently monitored, and the need for standardisation in data collection, processing and quality control. A citizen science programme to involve local communities in the protection of water resources was a key deliverable to establish the NETLAKE network and bridge communication gaps between researchers, policy makers and managers, and between scientists and local lake communities.
The Action’s website includes a dedicated Citizen Science section. A specific citizen science project was the NETLAKE Citizen Science water quality initiative that ran over the summers of 2016 and 2017. This water quality survey was performed by citizens, with help from local scientists, and recorded water temperatures, water colour, how fast the lake’s flora and fauna can decompose dead material and how much microplastic was present in the water.
In total over 30 lakes were surveyed in Europe. The idea for the survey came from a meeting of ten scientists and ten citizens from eight European countries in Brno, Czech Republic in early 2016, with the goal of setting up the NETLAKE citizen science initiative.
Together the scientists and citizens prepared the relevant protocols for data collection, such as water visibility, water colour, decomposition, plastic sampling, and adjusted them in the light of experience as the project progressed.
Read more about COST Action ‘Increasing understanding of alien species through citizen science’
Read more about COST Action ‘Networking Lake Observatories in Europe (NETLAKE)’