This blog is a summary of a very dynamic workshop that took place at the end of the NZ Ecological Society Conference last week in Christchurch. Amazingly, around 30 scientists, students, academics, teachers, consultants and project coordinators summoned their remaining energy to discuss some key citizen science topics. Earlier in the year, a call was…

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Citizen scientists’ important contributions to biodiversity conservation are constrained by their focus on data collection and public outreach in wealthy, accessible places. Sustainable conservation actions require initiatives such as those supported by the Participatory Monitoring and Management Partnership (www.pmmpartnership.com), in which data collected by land owners and resource users help to guide local decision-makers on…

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I thought this post significant as I personally found the idea of discovering multiple new species – even if they are flies – in a heavily urbanized area such as Los Angeles to be astonishing. – LFF   The latest buzz in the world of newly discovered insects was not in a distant jungle far away but…

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The community protocol meeting for the Ashaninka Land Monitoring Project happened on September 5, in Apiwtxa village, with the participation of the community, of the anthropologist Carolina Comandulli representing the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group, and of the partner organization Comissão Pró-Índio do Acre (CPI-AC). In the morning, the anthropologist presented to everyone what…

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Mapping for Change, the social enterprise that I co-founded, has been assisting community groups to run air quality studies for the past 5 years. During this period we have worked in 30 communities across London, carrying out studies with different tools – from collecting leaves, to examining lichens, to using diffusion tubes. We have also followed…

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The true potential of citizen science comes through in this article –  the power to change the world when combining “traditional” scientific methods with data generated through citizen science. This is a call to arm the farmers of Africa with a citizen science network that would help them learn about and maintain the health of soils. – LFF…

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Abstract: Citizen science is becoming more valuable as a potential source of environmental data. Involving citizens in data collection has the added educational benefits of increased scientific awareness and local ownership of environmental concerns. However, a common concern among domain experts is the presumed lower quality of data submitted by volunteers. In this paper, we…

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Besides describing some pretty cool science, this article touches on distributed computing as a mode of citizen science but also points to the difficulties of keeping a good citizen science project funded. –LFF     Milkyway@Home is in trouble. The citizen science-powered search for our galaxy’s dark matter lost all of its federal funding last…

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Dr Geoffrey Belknap explores ways in which members of the public can produce knowledge and participate in research The questions of how, by whom and where science was done in the Victorian period – the century which brought us ‘modern’ science – is never going to offer straightforward answers. Science, and scientific authority was produced and…

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