Promoting Rigorous Citizen Science: Evaluating the Learning Impact of the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST)

COASST (Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team) is a well-established rigorous citizen science program that has been centered on a single data type collected regionally – beached birds. Begun in 1999 with 12... [ view full abstract ]

COASST (Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team) is a well-established rigorous citizen science program that has been centered on a single data type collected regionally – beached birds. Begun in 1999 with 12 participants on the southern coast of Washington, COASST has grown to over 800 active participants collecting data on more than 450 beaches in Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska. With COASST participants having discovered 45,000 carcasses of 164 species to date, COASST is the world’s largest beached bird program, numerically and geographically.

In 2012, with funding from the National Science Foundation, a study was conducted to examine how effective COASST trainings are in imparting knowledge and skills to individuals new to COASST, and on the subsequent learning for participants conducting monthly bird surveys on their beaches for one or more years. Of particular interest was participants’ understanding of various scales of data, from individual bird identification to use of COASST data by the science and resource management communities. Three survey instruments were utilized, with 430 individuals responding.

Findings suggest that COASST participants successfully acquired and retained knowledge and skills across a variety of areas, including measurement and bird identification methods, and reasons underlying the need for monthly surveys and tagging of bird carcasses. Moreover, the practice of collecting COASST data appears to enable individuals to evolve mental models of their immediate environment and beyond. Relative to the pre-trained population, COASST participants demonstrated a significant increase in knowledge of the annual cycle of occurrence of common species on their beach, and of the mortality factors contributing to why beachcast birds are found. More than a third were able to describe ways that COASST data had been used in a scientific or resource management context. Program design recommendations arising from the evaluation will also be discussed.