Citizen science in data and resource-limited areas: A tool to detect long-term ecosystem changes

Abstract

Coral reefs are threatened by numerous global and local stressors. In the face of predicted large-scale coral degradation over the coming decades, the importance of long-term monitoring of stress-induced ecosystem changes has been widely recognised. In areas where sustained funding is unavailable, citizen science monitoring has the potential to be a powerful alternative to conventional monitoring programmes. In this study we used data collected by volunteers in Southeast Sulawesi (Indonesia), to demonstrate the potential of marine citizen science programmes to provide scientifically sound information necessary for detecting ecosystem changes in areas where no alternative data are available. Data were collected annually between 2002 and 2012 and consisted of percent benthic biotic and abiotic cover and fish counts. Analyses revealed long-term coral reef ecosystem change. We observed a continuous decline of hard coral, which in turn had a significant effect on the associated fishes, at community, family and species levels. We provide evidence of the importance of marine citizen science programmes in detecting long-term ecosystem change as an effective way of delivering conservation data to local government and national agencies. This is particularly true for areas where funding for monitoring is unavailable, resulting in an absence of ecological data. For citizen science data to contribute to ecological monitoring and local decision-making, the data collection protocols need to adhere to sound scientific standards, and protocols for data evaluation need to be available to local stakeholders. Here, we describe the monitoring design, data treatment and statistical analyses to be used as potential guidelines in future marine citizen science projects.

Science for the Future: The Use of Citizen Science in Marine Research and Conservation

“…In other cases, citizen science data has been shown to demonstrate bias or inaccuracies (Courter et al 2013;Forrester et al 2015;van der Velde et al 2017), but this can be minimized in data summaries by examining broader-scale trends (e.g. family level rather than species level) (Fore et al 2001;Gouraguine et al 2019) or excluding data from participants that differed substantially to data collected by scientists (Culver et al 2010). Irrespectively, perceptions on data quality remain a key factor influencing the publication of citizen science data (Schläppy et al 2017).…”

Citizen science for predicting spatio-temporal patterns in seabird abundance during migration

“…In contrast to alternative approaches such as the use of tracking data [ 12 , 13 , 29 ] or vessel surveys [ 14 , 27 ], these massive datasets provide with low-cost information on long-term temporal and large spatial extents. This allows to identify spatio-temporal patterns from many different individuals belonging to several populations (e.g., [ 23 ]), as well as to quantify their seasonal and interannual variation in the long-term. Contrastingly, citizen science data have one main drawnback which is low data quality, due to low accuracy and precision, insufficient sample sizes as well as insufficient temporal and spatial representation [ 22 ].…”

“…However, it seems clear that, without proper standardized survey protocols and volunteer training, volunteer data may be highly variable in terms of precision (e.g., errors in species identification or biases in count estimates, uneven sampling effort, both in terms of temporal and spatial coverage, among others). In contrast to these caveats, as compared with the detailed data gathered from electronic devices, the massive datasets from citizen science projects have the advantage of offering low-cost information on long-term temporal and large spatial extents from many different individuals belonging to several populations (e.g., [ 23 ]). Prominent electronic citizen science data bases in terms of number of users include eBird [ 24 ] and Trektellen [ 25 ].…”

The observation of birds as informative tools to develop citizen science: Contributions of a 10-year record in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico

“…In other contexts, the concept of citizen science has been used as a way to democratize scientific knowledge [46]. Moreover, it represents important actions that can be undertaken, especially when financing turns out to be limited, irregular or inexistent; therefore, it becomes a reliable and feasible alternative for monitoring species [47].…”