Citizen science enlists the public in collecting large quantities of data across an array of habitats and locations over long spans of time. Citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge, and contributions from citizen scientists now provide a vast quantity of data about species occurrence and distribution around the world. Most citizen science projects also strive to help participants learn about the organisms they are observing and to experience the process by which scientific investigations are conducted. Developing and implementing public data-collection projects that yield both scientific and educational outcomes requires significant effort. This article describes the model for building and operating citizen science projects that has evolved at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology over the past two decades. We hope that our model will inform the fields of biodiversity monitoring, biological research, and science education while providing a window into the cultur...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2009.59.11.9

Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy

A citizen scientist is a volunteer who collects and/or processes data as part of a scientific enquiry. Projects that involve citizen scientists are burgeoning, particularly in ecology and the environmental sciences, although the roots of citizen science go back to the very beginnings of modern science itself.

A new dawn for citizen science.

The authors of this
 Policy Forum
 developed a comprehensive database of >37,000 river restoration projects across the United States. Such projects have increased exponentially over the past decade with more than a billion dollars spent annually since 1990. Most are intended to enhance water quality, manage riparian zones, improve in-stream habitat, allow fish passage, and stabilize stream banks. Only 10% of project records document any form of project monitoring, and little if any of this information is either appropriate or available for assessing the ecological effectiveness of restoration activities.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/308/5722/636.full.pdf

Synthesizing U.S. river restoration efforts

Citizen science, the involvement of volunteers in research, has increased the scale of ecological field studies with continent-wide, centralized monitoring efforts and, more rarely, tapping of volunteers to conduct large, coordinated, field experiments. The unique benefit for the field of ecology lies in understanding processes occurring at broad geographic scales and on private lands, which are impossible to sample extensively with traditional field research models. Citizen science produces large, longitudinal data sets, whose potential for error and bias is poorly understood. Because it does not usually aim to uncover mechanisms underlying ecological patterns, citizen science is best viewed as complementary to more localized, hypothesis-driven research. In the process of addressing the impacts of current, global “experiments” altering habitat and climate, large-scale citizen science has led to new, quantitative approaches to emerging questions about the distribution and abundance of organisms across spa...

/pdf/citizen-science-as-an-ecological-research-tool-challenges-4itbtd5neh.pdf

Citizen Science as an Ecological Research Tool: Challenges and Benefits

http://www.cbsg.org/sites/cbsg.org/files/2013_AM/Fischer_Lindenmayer_Assessment_animal_relocations_2000.pdf

An assessment of the published results of animal relocations

Collaborations between scientists and volunteers have the potential to broaden the scope of research and enhance the ability to collect scientific data. Interested members of the public may contribute valuable information as they learn about wildlife in their local communities.

Citizen Science: Can Volunteers Do Real Research?

Culture and conservationA greater sensitivity to local culture could increase the success of both conservation and development projects

Environmental Conflict Resolution

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050%5B0295:STSS%5D2.3.CO;2

Saving the Salton Sea

ames Bailey stands on the banks of Romney Creek, a broad but short tidal stream that flows through the US Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground and into the Chesapeake Bay north of Baltimore. Here, on a sunny fall day, an eastern deciduous forest sheds its autumn leaves quietly not far from a site where Army engineers test weapons, munitions, and other military equipment. A short distance upstream, some 30-40 roosting bald eagles eye the water for signs of fish. Downstream, great mounds of dried guano on Pooles Island in the Chesapeake Bay attest to the 600 pairs of great blue herons that nested there over the summer. At a nearby pond, some 2000 ducks and other migrating waterfowl rest on cool fall nights. "If we weren't here, this land would be all marinas and condominiums," says Bailey, an Army wildlife biologist at Aberdeen. Instead, Aberdeen's 79,000 acres hold a healthy deer herd, beaver ponds, turkey vultures and black vultures, red-tailed and marsh hawks, and the largest bald eagle population on the northern Chesapeake. "We are a de facto wildlife sanctuary," Bailey

Jeffrey P. Cohn

Papers

Citizen Science: Can Volunteers Do Real Research?

Culture and conservationA greater sensitivity to local culture could increase the success of both conservation and development projects

Environmental Conflict Resolution

Saving the Salton Sea

New defenders of wildlife Practicing conservation and protecting habitat are not usually considered parts of the military's job description