Advantages of Volunteer‐Based Biodiversity Monitoring in Europe

Abstract

Without robust and unbiased systems for monitoring, changes in natural systems will remain enigmatic for policy makers, leaving them without a clear idea of the consequences of any environmental policies they might adopt. Generally, biodiversity-monitoring activities are not integrated or evaluated across any large geographic region. The EuMon project conducted the first large-scale evaluation of monitoring practices in Europe through an on-line questionnaire and is reporting on the results of this survey. In September 2007 the EuMon project had documented 395 monitoring schemes for species, which represents a total annual cost of about 4 million euro, involving more than 46,000 persons devoting over 148,000 person-days/year to biodiversity-monitoring activities. Here we focused on the analysis of variations of monitoring practices across a set of taxonomic groups (birds, amphibians and reptiles, mammals, butterflies, plants, and other insects) and across 5 European countries (France, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland). Our results suggest that the overall sampling effort of a scheme is linked with the proportion of volunteers involved in that scheme. Because precision is a function of the number of monitored sites and the number of sites is maximized by volunteer involvement, our results do not support the common belief that volunteer-based schemes are too noisy to be informative. Just the opposite, we believe volunteer-based schemes provide relatively reliable data, with state-of-the-art survey designs or data-analysis methods, and consequently can yield unbiased results. Quality of data collected by volunteers is more likely determined by survey design, analytical methodology, and communication skills within the schemes rather than by volunteer involvement per se.

The Citizen Science Landscape: From Volunteers to Citizen Sensors and Beyond

“…Traditional solutions to gaining credibility are to provide reliable information or gain credentials such as qualifications; however, this works only when there are "gatekeepers" to filter information, something which is not possible with the internet on a global scale [73]. The dependability of volunteer-derived data is an old problem within biology and ecology, and therefore a number of methods to help to increase the reliability of the information gathered have been developed [6,22]. Firstly, the researchers must concisely and without jargon ask the right questions in the right way to get the quality of answer that is needed, and instructions and processes must be clear and as simple as possible [3,[9][10][11].…”

“…Firstly, the researchers must concisely and without jargon ask the right questions in the right way to get the quality of answer that is needed, and instructions and processes must be clear and as simple as possible [3,[9][10][11]. Projects are usually kept relatively simple; for example, they might include counting a few common avian species frequenting a feeding table rather than searching for rare or difficult to spot species [6,22,74,75]. Projects that require higher levels of skill can be successfully developed; however, they may require additional training or longevity of participation in order to increase experience indeed, many volunteer programs document "learner" effects whereby data collectors become more accurate and correct over time [6,10,22,[76][77][78][79][80].…”

“…Projects are usually kept relatively simple; for example, they might include counting a few common avian species frequenting a feeding table rather than searching for rare or difficult to spot species [6,22,74,75]. Projects that require higher levels of skill can be successfully developed; however, they may require additional training or longevity of participation in order to increase experience indeed, many volunteer programs document "learner" effects whereby data collectors become more accurate and correct over time [6,10,22,[76][77][78][79][80]. Some of the online citizen science programmes that Cornell University has run in the past incorporate short tests and quizzes which help in assessing a contributors' knowledge; they have also implemented an automated meso-filter which evaluates data input and evaluates it based on already known parameters, submissions which fall out of these categories are flagged for expert review, the contributor contacted, and the entry either verified or disregarded [6,10,81].…”

“…The literature suggests, however, that if the program protocols have been properly formed and tailored to the appropriate audience data does not often differ significantly from expert data collection. Delaney et al [50] found that far from overlooking data collection methods novices were "more careful" in their measurements and annotations, due to are being very aware of their novice status and shown in many studies to yield similar results to experts [22,50,83]. Delaney et al [50] found experts and nonexperts did not come up with any significantly statistical differences, indeed students were found to be between 80 and 95% accurate with identification, with significant predictors of accuracy being their age and level of education.…”

“…Ordinarily constraints such as money and time would make studies unfeasible or impossible for an individual organisation [10,15,20]. Indeed, citizen science programmes are often more resilient to variations in financial support than other programs [19,21,22]. …”