A citizen science platform contributes to wildlife conservation in the US and beyond

Citizen Science is becoming increasingly popular as a means of involving the general public in scientific data collection and problem solving around the globe. While citizen science is being applied to disciplines ranging from... [ view full abstract ]

Citizen Science is becoming increasingly popular as a means of involving the general public in scientific data collection and problem solving around the globe. While citizen science is being applied to disciplines ranging from public health to economics, and from astronomy to neurobiology, one of its most popular applications is in ecosystem and wildlife conservation.

The CitSci.org citizen science platform was developed in 2007 based on the premise that an efficient, open and transparent citizen science data management platform will rapidly advance the utility, outcomes and impacts of citizen science programs globally, especially those related to ecology and conservation. There are many citizen science platforms available online, but most are of very limited focus. The benefit of CitSci.org lies in its integrated and flexible support of projects wishing to measure anything, anywhere and that require infrastructure and support for the full spectrum of citizen science needs. CitSci.org's fully-customizable platform currently supports 175+ projects globally, ranging from projects monitoring stream quality to wildlife populations to invasive species – and its projects have generated 397,164+ rigorous scientific observations.

While each citizen science project remains autonomous and maintains its individual project identity for project management and volunteer recruitment and engagement, they also establish standardized data collection methodologies that can be shared across projects. The ability to connect and share data, methods and results between projects through both inter- and intra-disciplinary cross-project collaboration has the potential to create and sustain individual projects and increase impact as part of a greater conservation network.

One of the species of focus on CitSci.org is the American pika (Ochotona princeps). The benefits of the CitSci.org platform to advance pika science have been realized in two ways. First, each of the 4 projects researching the American pika have created a CitSci.org project with customized datasheets for volunteers to submit new data and individual knowledge to a central data repository, allowing research scientists to easily vet volunteer data quality. Second, projects are benefiting from the CitSci.org infrastructure through cross-project collaboration. We demonstrate how CitSci.org supports the needs of place-based conservation programs while integrating their collective efforts for improved scientific impact.