Improving citizen science as a tool biodiversity monitoring

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FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS

Improving citizen science as a tool for biodiversity monitoring

Doutoramento em Biologia

Biodiversidade

Patrícia Maria Nunes Tiago

Tese orientada por:

Professor Doutor Henrique Miguel Pereira

Professora Doutora Margarida Santos-Reis

Doutor César Capinha

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FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS

Improving citizen science as a tool for biodiversity monitoring

Doutoramento em Biologia

Biodiversidade

Patrícia Maria Nunes Tiago

Tese orientada por:

Doutor Henrique Miguel Pereira

Doutora Margarida Santos-Reis

Doutor César Capinha

Júri:

Presidente:

● Doutor Henrique Manuel Roque Nogueira Cabral, Professor Catedrático da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Vogais:

● Doutor Pedro Rui Correia de Oliveira Beja, Investigador Coordenador de Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO-InBIO Laboratório associado) da Universidade do Porto ● Doutor Henrique Miguel Leite de Freitas Pereira, Investigador Coordenador de Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO-InBIO Laboratório associado) da Universidade do Porto (orientador)

● Doutor Francisco Manuel Ribeiro Ferraria Moreira, Investigador Coordenador de Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO-InBIO Laboratório associado) da Universidade do Porto ● Doutora Ana Isabel Oliveira Delicado, Investigadora Auxiliar do Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa

● Doutora Cristina Maria dos Santos Luís, Investigadora de Pós-Doutoramento do Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência da Universidade de Lisboa

● Doutor José Pedro Oliveira Neves Granadeiro, Professor Auxiliar da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Documento especialmente elaborado para a obtenção do grau de doutor Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/89543/2012)

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Resumo

A ciência cidadã, ou seja, o envolvimento de não cientistas na investigação científica, teve um grande crescimento e desenvolvimento nos últimos anos. Algumas questões cientificas só podem ser respondidas com a recolha e tratamento de uma grande quantidade de dados e, a ajuda de cidadãos nestas tarefas, deu um grande contributo para a realização de alguns projetos que não poderiam ser desenvolvidos apenas com o trabalho de investigadores, devido a uma escassez de recursos, quer humanos, quer financeiros.

Tratados internacionais tais como a Convenção da Diversidade Biológica, a Convenção sobre o Comércio Internacional de Espécies da Fauna e da Flora Selvagem Ameaçadas de Extinção e a Convenção sobre a Conservação de Espécies Migradoras da Fauna Selvagem identificaram a necessidade de avaliar as alterações globais da biodiversidade. O Painel Intergovernamental da Biodiversidade e dos Serviços dos Ecossistemas também tem como uma das suas principais funções realizar avaliações regulares do conhecimento que temos da biodiversidade. A ciência cidadã pode ser uma ferramenta importante para a monitorização da biodiversidade a nível regional e a nível global.

Com esta tese pretende-se abordar cinco questões científicas principais na área da ciência cidadã, com o objetivo de melhorar estes projetos, para que possam, cada vez mais, complementar a informação científica e contribuir para uma mais eficaz monitorização da biodiversidade. Estas cinco questões são: Qual o contexto social de um projeto de ciência cidadã e que pontos devem ser tidos em consideração quando se desenha um projeto de ciência cidadã?; Quais são os benefícios e as limitações, existentes e potenciais, para diferentes grupos de cidadãos, para participar num projeto de ciência cidadã de registo de biodiversidade, utilizando como caso de estudo o projeto BioDiversity4All —um projeto português de ciência cidadã na área da biodiversidade?; Quais são as principais motivações intrínsecas para participar em projetos de ciência cidadã?; Quais as variáveis que influenciam as localizações onde os participantes estão a realizar observações?; Será que os dados de ciência cidadã poderão ser usados para estimar os nichos climáticos e a distribuição das espécies?

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A primeira parte desta tese pretende dar a conhecer o contexto social dos projetos de ciência cidadã, explorando, de uma forma sucinta, a sua história e identificando os principais atores envolvidos nestes projetos. Este capítulo analisa os principais pontos a considerar, da perspetiva dos diferentes grupos de participantes, quando se desenha um projeto desta natureza. O desenho do projeto deve ter em conta diferentes compromissos que se têm que assumir, tais como: decidir mantê-lo pequeno, com controlo local dos dados, perto das questões que interessam os voluntários e as comunidades locais, ou associá-lo a uma iniciativa global, com o benefício de ampliar as possibilidades de utilização dos dados; manter o foco principal na qualidade dos dados, com uma recolha de dados rigorosa, de uma forma sistemática, ou na facilidade de produção de dados, com benefícios para o volume de dados recolhidos e para educação e o envolvimento ambiental dos cidadãos. Quando se esperam do projeto resultados científicos e decisões de gestão, a recolha de dados verificáveis é essencial. Este requisito é também importante para atrair mais cientistas para estes projetos. Ser explícito sobre os objetivos do projeto é fundamental para evitar mal-entendidos nas expectativas dos diferentes grupos envolvidos. Desenhar cuidadosamente projetos de ciência cidadã poderá contribuir para um aumento do sucesso destas iniciativas.

A este trabalho seguiu-se uma análise dos benefícios e das limitações existentes e potenciais no registo da biodiversidade, para os diferentes grupos da sociedade (desde cidadãos até grandes empresas). Esta análise é baseada na experiência do projeto BioDiversity4All. Em Portugal, há uma grande ausência de tradição de observação da biodiversidade. Neste contexto, identificar distintos grupos de cidadãos para quem um projeto como o BioDIversity4All pudesse trazer benefícios, revelou-se uma tarefa importante, uma vez que o recrutamento pode ser mais difícil de atingir do que noutros países, onde os hábitos estabelecidos de ciência cidadã facilitam o recrutamento e a participação. Uma abordagem bottom-up, com uma comunicação e estratégias de envolvimento específicas para cada grupo é essencial para recrutar e reter grupos de cidadãos que possam ter interesse na iniciativa. Um benefício geral, relevante para a maioria dos grupos analisados, é a contribuição para um aumento do conhecimento dos valores naturais, uma melhoria da educação para a biodiversidade e maior consciencialização ambiental para a conservação.

O capítulo seguinte desta tese estuda as motivações dos cidadãos para participar em projetos de ciência cidadã, em Portugal, e analisa o padrão de motivações entre diferentes grupos de

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utilizadores. A maioria das pessoas que se inscreveram no BioDiversity4All, e que responderam ao inquérito realizado, tem uma educação superior e não apresenta um nível de participação elevado. Verifica-se que, para o conjunto total dos participantes, é bastante valorizada a relação que têm com o projeto, e que o grau de participação influencia o valor atribuído a motivações que se prendem com o sentido de utilidade, ou o relacionamento com o grupo. Um trabalho criterioso no envolvimento dos participantes, tendo em conta as suas motivações intrínsecas, é fundamental para aumentar e manter a participação de cidadãos em projetos de ciência cidadã.

No capítulo seguinte é comparado o efeito das variáveis geográficas nas observações registadas na plataforma BioDiversity4All, para os diferentes grupos taxonómicos. Este estudo mostrou, como esperado, o enviesamento que bases de dados de ciência cidadã, oportunistas, podem ter. Algumas áreas do país são muito cobertas quando comparadas com outras, um número limitado de cidadãos é responsável por uma grande parte das observações, alguns períodos do ano têm muito mais observações. Considerando as variáveis selecionadas, a maioria acaba por refletir a acessibilidade aos locais como por exemplo a altitude, a densidade de estradas ou a densidade de caminhos pedonais. Apesar da variação existente entre grupos foi possível identificar alguns padrões. A densidade de caminhos pedonais foi uma variável com uma importância significativa para sete dos oito grupos taxonómicos. Ao contrário de outros estudos, a densidade de caminhos explica mais variação na distribuição de observações do que a densidade de estradas.

A última parte deste estudo avalia como bases de dados de ciência cidadã oportunistas, apesar das limitações já identificadas, são fontes viáveis de dados que podem ser usados na modelação da distribuição de espécies. Testou-se também se os atributos das espécies de répteis e anfíbios podem indicar a fiabilidade e a integridade de dados oportunistas de distribuição. Foi realizada uma análise dos nichos climáticos das espécies com dados de ciência cidadã, do BioDiversity4All, e comparados com dados científicos. Os resultados obtidos com espécies de répteis e anfíbios variam muito entre as espécies analisadas neste estudo, o que não é inesperado uma vez que, como na maioria dos grupos biológicos, as espécies de répteis e anfíbios diferem bastante, sendo alguns, por exemplo, mais esquivos, o que leva a uma variação na detetabilidade e facilidade de identificação nos ambientes naturais. Para algumas das espécies, os modelos de distribuição apresentam performances preditivas boas e semelhantes para dados de ciência cidadã e para dados científicos, apesar de os primeiros apresentarem, em média, valores de

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performance mais baixos. Os resultados sugerem que este tipo de bases de dados pode apresentar alternativas viáveis a dados científicos quando estes não estão disponíveis. O desafio será combinar as diferentes fontes de dados para atingir melhores resultados.

Como uma última contribuição desta tese apresentam-se linhas de investigação futuras nesta área. O futuro dos estudos em ciência cidadã parece estar grandemente ligado aos avanços na tecnologia digital tais como a capacidade de recolha e armazenamento de grandes volumes de dados a baixo custo, a possibilidade de análises complexas destes dados e a personalização de aplicações e projetos que servem os interesses e que se adequam às motivações dos participantes. A “gamificação”, ou seja, a tendência de incorporar elementos de jogos no desenho do projeto para promover a participação, motivação e envolvimento de participantes, também se está a tornar uma área popular de investigação estando a ser usada em diferentes âmbitos nos quais se inclui a ciência cidadã, sendo de esperar que, a sua utilização aumente nos próximos anos. Para que haja um, ainda maior, envolvimento da comunidade científica, outra área que deve ser analisada mais em detalhe no futuro diz respeito às motivações dos cientistas para participarem em projetos de ciência cidadã.

A ciência cidadã pode ser uma ferramenta interessante para o desenvolvimento de programas de monitorização da biodiversidade. A adoção de protocolos comuns e normalizados poderão ajudar na utilização destes dados. Estudos sobre a robustez da qualidade de dados e sobre as análises estatísticas mais adaptadas às características específicas destes projetos são importantes para dar suporte à utilização dos dados recolhidos, já que podem reduzir os erros de amostragem, permitindo um melhor equilíbrio entre a quantidade e qualidade dos dados recolhidos.

Palavras-chave:

ciência cidadã, monitorização da biodiversidade, motivação dos participantes, planificação de projeto, bases de dados oportunistas.

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Abstract

Citizen science, i.e. the engagement of non-scientists in research, had an impressive development in the last few years. Some scientific questions can only be addressed with the involvement of a huge number of data collectors and analysers. The effort of such work based on professionals hampers the feasibility of some experiments. Consequently, involving volunteer citizens in monitoring and research programs (so called citizen science projects) is a growing activity in many countries and is expanding to new scientific areas.

International treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species identify the necessity to evaluate change in the status and trends of global biodiversity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services also has as one of its four main functions to perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity. Therefore, citizen science can be seen as a tool to monitor biodiversity change at regional and global level.

This thesis addresses five main research questions: What is the social context of a citizen science project and what points should be taken into consideration when designing a citizen science project?; What are the current and the potential benefits and limitations, for different citizen groups, in participating in a project of citizen science for registering biodiversity, using as a case-study BioDiversity4All —a Portuguese biodiversity citizen science project?; What are the main intrinsic motivations to participate in citizen science projects?; What are the variables that drive the locations where users are making observations?; Can we use citizen science data to estimate climatic niches and species distributions?

The first part of the research provides the social context of citizen science projects, exploring briefly the history of citizen science and identifying the main stakeholders involved in these projects. This chapter analyses the main points to take into consideration, from the perspectives of these different stakeholders, when designing a citizen science project. It is fundamental that project design acknowledges the existence of social trade-offs like: deciding the scope and scale

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of the project; deciding to keep small, with local data control, closer to the volunteers and community issues, or connecting with larger initiatives to benefit data usage; focusing more on guaranteeing data quality with the collection of rigorous, reliable data gathered in a systematized way, or on the easiness of producing data, with higher benefits to data volume, environmental education and engagement. When management decisions and scientific research outcomes are expected to arise from the project, verifiable and reliable data is essential. This requirement is also important to attract more scientists to citizen science projects. Being explicit about the goals of the project is fundamental to avoid misunderstanding of expectations and outcomes of stakeholders. Planning carefully the design of a citizen science contributes to the increased success of such initiatives.

This work is proceeded by an analysis of the current and potential benefits of biodiversity registering, and as well as its limitations, for different societal groups (from individual citizens to large companies). One overall benefit is that this ultimately contributes to an increased societal knowledge about natural values, an improved biodiversity-related education and higher environment and conservation awareness. This analysis is based on the experience of the BioDiversity4All project. In Portugal, there is a significant lack of tradition on biodiversity observations and citizen science. In this context, identifying distinct citizen groups to whom a project like BioDiversity4All could be beneficial, proved to be an important task, since recruiting can be more difficult to achieve than in other countries, where established citizen science habits facilitate recruiting and participation. A bottom-up approach, with customized communication and engagement strategies, seems essential to recruit and retain citizen groups’ interest in the initiative.

The next part of this research is to study the main motivations for the participation of citizens in a citizen science project, in Portugal, and assess the pattern of motivations across different groups of users. Analysing survey respondents registered in BioDiversity4All, the majority have higher education and low level of participation. Relatedness with the project is the motivational category most valued. Other categories, like Value/Usefulness and Group Relatedness are more important for users that participate more. Working carefully on people’s involvement is fundamental to increase and maintain their participation on citizen science projects.

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In the following chapter, the effect of geographic variables on the observations registered in BioDiversity4All, among different taxonomical groups, is compared. This study, showed as expected, the bias that opportunistic citizen science databases may have. Some areas of the country are highly covered by observations, compared to others, a limited number of participants is responsible for most of the observations, and there are differences in the number of observations throughout the year. Considering the variables selected, most of them reflect accessibility such as altitude, density of roads, or density of paths. Despite the variation between groups we could identify some patterns. Path density was the variable that showed significant importance for seven of the eight taxonomic groups. In contrast with other studies, density of paths explained more variation than the density of roads in taxa distribution records.

The last part of the research assesses whether opportunistic citizen science databases are viable data sources to use in the modelling of species distributions and test if species attributes can indicate the reliability and completeness of the opportunistic distribution data. The analysis of sampling of species’ climatic niches based on citizen science records from BioDiversity4All was performed and compared with scientific records. The results obtained varied greatly among different herptile species, the ones used in this analysis, which is not unexpected because, as in most biological groups, herptile species differ greatly in terms of elusiveness and secludedness, which leads to a variation in detectability and ease of identification in the natural environment. For some species, distribution models presented good predictive performances, highly similar between models using citizen science data and those using data from a scientific database, despite a lower average performance of the former. The results suggest that opportunistic citizen science databases of species observations can represent a viable alternative to scientific records when these are not available, and the challenge might be to combine different data sources to achieve better results.

A final contribution of this research is the presentation of future research avenues in this area. The future of citizen science studies seems to be highly related with digital technology improvements with low-cost collection and storage of big data, complex analysis of this data and personalization of applications and projects to suit each person’s interests and motivations to participate. “Gamification”, or the trend of incorporating game-like elements in project design to foster participation, motivation and engagement, is also becoming a popular research area being used in several different scopes including citizen science, being expected an increased use

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in the following years. Another area to be develop in the future concerns scientists’ motivations to participate in citizen science projects that should also be better understood.

Citizen science programs and the development of coordinated capacity building initiatives can be good approaches to develop biodiversity monitoring programs. The adoption of common and standardized protocols in citizen science projects could help to use these data in monitoring programs. Studies on the robustness of data quality and on the evaluation of the statistical analysis better adapted to the specific characteristics of citizen science projects are important to give support to the use of the data collected, once they can reduce the sampling error, allowing a better balance between quantity and quality of data collected.

Keywords:

citizen-science, biodiversity monitoring, participants’ motivations, project design, opportunistic databases.

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Acknowledgements

There are many persons to thank for helping me through these four years of my PhD. I have been lucky enough to work with great working groups and have the support of incredible friends and an extraordinary family.

I would like to thank my advisor Henrique Miguel Pereira. I feel really lucky to have worked and learned with him. He provided great support and believed in this project from the start. He is a brilliant person with a great passion for science and biodiversity. It was great to be able to share his perspectives and enthusiasm.

I would also like to thank Margarida Santos-Reis for accepting being my advisor despite all the work and responsibilities she has upon her shoulders. Having the chance to work with her was fantastic. She was a great support at the University and in my work. Her comments and feedback were always inspiring and of invaluable help.

Although César Capinha has become my advisor only in the last year of my PhD we worked together since the beginning. I learnt a lot from him: from R, geographic information systems or modelling procedures. He was quite patient in teaching me areas that were completely new for me. He offered me a continued support and friendship during these four years and I would like to extend a big thank.

When I started my PhD, back in 2013, the members of TheoEco group gave me a great support in my return to FCUL. I would like to thank Ana Ceia Hasse, Silvia Ceausu, Murilo Miranda, Laetitia Navarro, Inês Martins, Alexandra Marques, for the time, although short, we shared in Lisboa and for receiving me so well in my travels to Leipzig. I was inspired by the great work of Vânia Proença. I would like to thank all the support she gave me at different phases of this PhD (even when it was just a thought growing in my mind).

When part of the group moved to Leipzig I received an enormous support from the ones that stayed: Mia (Margarida Ferreira), Luís Borda de Água, César Capinha and Ainara Avizanda. I

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would like to thank each of them for specific reasons. Mia was a wonderful friend. She was permanently available to help in everything I needed and was always interested in knowing how my work was going. Luís was my anchor at FCUL. He helped me a lot when I started, introduced me to Bayesian statistics and turned our university lunches into friendly and pleasant times. César I have already mentioned and Ainara was a great friend. It was always nice to share our mid-morning coffees and catch up on conversation. When she left to Spain I missed her a lot.

I would like to thank José Pedro Granadeiro and their group for letting me stay in their office for a long time, when my group left. They made me feel quite well there and were a great company. A special thanks to Pedro Lourenço and Letizia Campioni.

At the Science Faculty, CE3C and MARE I cannot forget to thank Inês Teixeira do Rosário, Sofia Seabra, Ana Leal, Nuno Pedroso, Patrícia Garcia-Pereira, Casparus Crous, Marta Santos, Filomena Magalhães, Susana Varela, Manuel Sapage, Daniel Alves, Inês Órfão, Antonieta Charrua, Francisco Dionísio, Ricardo Rocha, Paula Gonçalves, Sérgio Chosas, Helena Serrano, Teresa Dias, Teresa Mexia, Zulema Rio, Otávio Paulo, Paula Simões, Sietze Norder, Mafalda Basto, Luísa Chaves, Paula Chainho for all their support, lunches and nice and fruitful conversations. Cláudia Oliveira was always a big support. I would like to thank her for being always so nice, helpful and available. Leonor Rodrigues gave me also a big help and support at the final stage. Cris Liotti was great making my days at FCUL more relax and healthy.

In ISA I met a fantastic group of scientists from CIBIO-INBIO that received me greatly and gave me a big encouragement in my last period of the PhD. A big thank to Luís Borda de Água, Pedro Beja, Francisco Moreira, Rui Figueira, Margarida Ferreira, Fernando Ascenção, Rafael Barrientos, Saeid Alirezazadeh and Fahimeh Alibabaei, Mário Ferreira, Lorenzo Quaglietta, Marcello D’Amico, Ricardo Martins, Andreia Penado, Sílvia Pena, Sasha Vasconcelos, Miguel Monteiro, António Ferreira, Francisco Amorim, Luis Reino, Joana Santana, Virginia Pimenta and Miguel Porto. A special thanks to Filipa Filipe and Hugo Rebelo for such a long and strong friendship.

I would like to thank José Carlos Brito, from CIBIO, for a very useful conversation that made me improve much a chapter of this thesis. To Maria João Gouveia I would like to thank the support I received to get into intrinsic motivation theories. To Ana Ceia Hasse I would like to thank the

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support she gave me in such a crucial period of my PhD and at a very hard time for her. I need to thank Tiago Marques for friendship, work advices, laughs and good mood. He is an amazing scientist, it was wonderful to learn with him and his comments were really helpful.

I would like to thank the members of the BioDiversity4All team. I am really proud of developing this project with them. I would like to thank Marcel Dix for being always there when we need him and Filipe Ribeiro and Luís Tiago Ferreira for our wonderful brainstormings and for the project development. We worked quite well together. I would like to thank very much Filipe for his huge support to my work and for an endless friendship. I like him a lot. It was great to feel that he always believed in this thesis. Marta Gromicho, Cláudia Baeta, Inês Teixeira do Rosário and Rita Baptista appeared a bit later but with lots of enthusiasm and commitments to BioDiversity4Al. Thanks for all the help, support and fellowship.

During all these seven years of BioDiversity4All we received a great support from Patrícia Garcia Pereira, Rui Figueira, Henk Feith, João Carlos Farinha, Francisco Barros and Henrique Pereira dos Santos to whom I would like to express my acknowledgements. I would also like to thank all volunteers who participate in BioDiversity4All project.

I would like to thank Cristina Luís for her support and for all the projects we share: European Research Night, Lisbon BioBlitz, ECSA and all future projects. She is really enthusiastic, hard-working and full of innovative ideas.

I would like to thank also the European Citizen Science Association community. It is a pleasure to go to the meetings, discuss ideas and to contribute to the development of this area in which we all believe. It was a pleasure to meet Linda Davies in that first meeting in Copenhagen, back in 2011. She is an enthusiastic and amazing woman that made us believe that we were going in the right direction. It is also a great pleasure to work with Martin Brocklehurst, David Slawson and Connor Smith, in the Policy Working Group. I have been learning a lot. I would also like to thank Andrea Sforzi, Malene Brunn, Claudia Göebel, Muki Haklay, Marisa Ponti, Lucy Robinson, Poppy Lakeman Fraser, Fermin Serrano, Luigi Cecaronni and Jaume Pierre. To Alletta Bonn, Susanne Hecker and Anett Richter I would like to thank for their support in Leipzig and for a

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wonderful workshop they organized. It was great to discuss with them about the scientific role of citizen science.

I would like to thank Pedro Ferreira, Ana José, Afonso, André, Leonor Brandão, Luís Filipe Ferreira, Miguel Pinto, Catarina Marques, Luís Costa, Susana Reis, Cláudia Mieiro, Filipe Martinho, Ana Lu, Marta Gromicho, Tiago Brito, Jaime, Ana Veríssimo, Filipe Ribeiro, Xavier, Tiago Marques, Ana Azevedo, Filipe, Sarah, Maria, Ana Filipa Filipe, Hugo Rebelo, Francisco, Rita and Rui Gonçalves Pereira, Inês, Rita, Mariana Oliveira, Pedro Borralho, Mia, Ana Luísa Rego, Carina Cunha, Patrícia Filipe, Patrícia Agostinho, Madalena Patacho, Sara Cândido, Fernando Jorge, Sara Fragoso, João Perdigão, Maria José Teixeira, António Velez, Anália Torres, Nélia Soares, Vanda Castanheira for being such wonderful and attending friends and family. Their patience and encouragement throughout this stage of my life has been invaluable, and I could not have done it without their help. I would like to thank Frederico Lyra for a great friendship and for the best PhD ending gift I could ever received.

My Mum and Dad were always my greatest support. Without them I would definitely not be able to do this thesis. Their huge support with my sons Guilherme and Francisco was priceless. They always supported my decisions and were there for me in all good and bad times. I love them a lot.

Almost finishing I would like to thank Tiago. There are not enough adjectives to describe how wonderful he has been in all these years. I am very lucky to have him in my life and I love him a lot. I need to thank for his support, endless help and patience. Thanks for all our shared projects and ideas that make my life always lively and full of emotion.

Guilherme and Francisco are for sure the stars of my life. Without them my life does not make sense anymore. I love them both with all my strength and I hope I can help, somehow, to make this world a bit shinier for them.

This PhD work was supported by a grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/89543/2012) to whom I extend my acknowledgments.

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1. Introduction

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Barack Obama, 2008

1.1. Citizen Science in Context

Anthropogenic activities have become the major driver of changes and impacts on Earth causing e.g., deforestation, pollution, climate change and species loss (Gibson & Venkateswar, 2015). Recognising this, several scientists proposed a new geological age – Anthropocene – suggesting that the Earth has now left its natural geological epoch, the interglacial state, called the Holocene (Waters et al., 2016). Unequivocally the growth of human population, with a consequent increase in natural resources exploitation, is pushing up emergent challenges to humankind. In parallel, the digital revolution is changing completely our lifestyle and our society concerns, but also increasing our capabilities for citizenship and science progress.

Resources exploitation increased the need for a sustainable development. Sustainable development can be defined as a socio-economic development that meets the needs of present users without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, particularly regarding the use of natural resources and associated waste production (Maida, 2007). Sustainability demands interdisciplinary actions and a closer integration between science and education (Bruffee, 1999), driving citizens to recognise their roles in knowledge-production. However, to develop this sustainability literacy and citizen’s engagement it is necessary to take into consideration: different cultural and generational perspectives, the relation between local and global problems and a trustful relationship between scientists and citizens (Bonney et al., 2009).

Not surprisingly the involvement of non-professionals in contemporary scientific research and environmental monitoring, termed Citizen Science, has become a mainstream approach for

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scientific research (Miller-Rushing et al., 2012). Citizen science gained higher relevance in the last decade and three associations with a broad geographic base emerged to standardize concepts and objectives of the field, to unite and improve expertise, and to power citizen science encompassing educators, scientists, data managers, non-profit organizations and others. The first Citizen Science Association arose in the United States of America in 2010, and in 2013 the European Citizen Science Association stood up in Europe, based in Germany, followed in 2016 by the Australian Citizen Science Association (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1. – Logotypes of the three citizen science associations: Ciitizen Science Association, European

Citizen Science Association, Australian Citizen Science Association.

Despite citizen science not being a new approach for collecting scientific information (Figure 1.2.), the term appeared recently. For many years, giving a definition for citizen science was not easy as no one had really settled on a name for the concept. Terms used to refer to the subject included participatory science, participatory action research, participatory monitoring, civic science, and even crowdsourced science (Haklay, 2015). Back in the 1990s the concept of citizen science appeared simultaneously in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom, meaning volunteer data collection to support ornithological research, in the United States of America, and integration of science and citizenship to advance policy goals, in the United Kingdom (Haklay, 2015). The term entered the Oxford English Dictionary, in June 2014, as “scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.” However, Wikipedia had already an entrance to the concept in 2005, defining citizen science as “a project (or ongoing program of work) which aims to make scientific discoveries, verify scientific hypotheses, or gather data which can be used for scientific purposes, and which involves large numbers of people, many of whom have no specific scientific training.” Citizens who were called, for years, as birdwatchers or birders, amateur astronomers, volunteer weather observers, or amateur archaeologists are now under the same umbrella as citizen scientists.

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Figure 1.2 - An advertisement in a Minnesota newspaper, in 1975, asking for volunteers to help tag

butterflies. Student Norah Urquhart (pictured), participated. Credits: Willow Becker.

The emergence of this new approach in citizen science projects occurs due to a combination of factors, from technological to social. In terms of technology it can be highlighted the popularization of personal computers, mobile phones and spatially enabled portable devices, such as global positioning system (GPS), the growth of the Web and mobile communication (in particular Web 2.0 characterized by greater user interactivity and collaboration, more pervasive network connectivity and enhanced communication channels), and the development and spread of cheap sensors that can collect data from the environment (Figure 1.3.). Moreover, the rapid development of geospatial technologies allowed citizens to contribute with geospatial data (Goodchild 2007a, Elwood 2008) like georeferenced observations of the natural world (e.g., wildlife sightings) via interactive geovisualization interfaces (e.g., Google Maps, Google Earth, and Microsoft Virtual Earth), social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram), or citizen science digital projects (e.g., eBird, iNaturalist, iSpot, Atlas of Living Australia, Observado) (Silvertown, 2009; Sullivan et al., 2009; Dickinson et al., 2012; Guan et al., 2012). In social terms, especially in developed countries, the last decades have seen a rapid growth in education

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(especially higher education), an increase in citizens’ leisure time and an increase in educated and able retirees (Haklay, 2015).

Figure 1.3. - Women from Komo (Republic of the Congo) learning to map in the forest, as part of the

Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) Intelligent Maps project. Credits: Gill Conquest, EXCITES, University College London.

In Portugal, citizen science has no significant tradition and related projects are still scarce. Even the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds (SPEA), a nonprofit scientific association that involves many amateur naturalists in the study and conservation of birds in Portugal, was only founded in 1993. It is therefore a quite new organization compared to equivalent organizations from Northern Europe or North America. Most citizen science projects have appeared since 2010, mainly involving research data related to biodiversity and environment (e.g., BioDiversity4All, Invasoras.pt, Charcos com Vida, Portuguese monitoring network of Lucanus

cervus, GelAvista), astronomy (e.g., Sun4All, Alunos Caçadores de Asteróides) (Figure 1.4.) and

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Figure 1.4. - Students from Aposenior (senior academy of Coimbra, Portugal) in a Sun4all workshop, an

initiative of Socientize. Credits: Paulo Gama Mota.

1.2. Benefits and Limitations of Citizen Science

Citizen science projects offer many benefits for the different groups involved, from scientists, managers and participants to decision-makers. Technology creates opportunities for scientists to conveniently solicit useful information from citizens on many different features or phenomena of interest (Seeger, 2008; Anadón et al., 2009; Haklay, 2013). Projects that use citizens as “sensors” contain rich local information (Goodchild, 2007a, 2007b), others have the potential to provide information over large areas or to be timely updated (Goodchild, 2007b). Citizen science can also release some studies from funding constrain which, in many cases, limit the amount and scope of professional monitoring (Darwall & Dulvy, 1996; Danielsen et al., 2005).

Being able to incorporate data collected by citizen scientists with scientific studies can allow scientists to fill knowledge gaps on species distribution (Pereira & Cooper, 2006; Danielsen et al., 2009; Danielsen et al., 2010; Szabo et al., 2010; Dickinson et al., 2012; Pereira et al., 2013).

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Citizen science projects are also important to increase public awareness on conservation issues (Darwall & Dulvy, 1996) and to improve science and technology literacy among participants (Jenkins, 1999; Trumbull et al., 2000; Danielsen et al., 2005). Although citizen science is important at a local scale, where people can get involved into the problems of their community like water supply, local sources of pollution, deforestation or public health issues, it is also quite relevant at a global scale, where it can support research on climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, overfishing, or natural resource depletion.

Despite the recent progress and widespread nature of the phenomena, there are scientists that are sceptical on what citizen science can allow them to do. The limited training, knowledge and expertise of contributors and their relative anonymity can lead to poor quality, misleading or even malicious data being submitted in the frame of those projects (Foster-Smith & Evans, 2003; Alabri & Hunter, 2010). Some ecologists argue that this type of data cannot be used to reliably detect and adequately characterize ecological change (Penrose & Call, 1995; Brandon et al., 2003; Rodriguez, 2003; Bhattacharjee, 2005), grounding their opinion on research studies that show an increase in variability in data collected by citizen scientists compared to data collected by experts (Ericsson & Wallin, 1999; Barrett et al., 2002; Genet & Sargent, 2003). Another argument is that those studies use simplistic protocols that do not produce reliable data (Ericsson & Wallin, 1999; Engel & Voshell, 2002), for instance by under- or over- estimating species abundance (McLaren & Cadman, 1999; Bray & Schramm, 2001) or leading to an inadequate identification of species (Mumby et al., 1995; Brandon el al., 2003; Genet and Sargent, 2003).

While citizen science limitations are largely acknowledged by the scientific community, several scientists argue that the benefits of these projects compensate their limitations once they are taken into consideration, evaluated and, when possible, mitigated by proper solutions. Ideally, one can develop integrated hierarchical models which will account for the particularities of the specific data collection process, adequately accounting for the potential biases or increased variability hence allowing robust inferences to be made with sensible measure of precision associated with them.

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Many approaches have recently been proposed to assure citizen science data quality (Goodchild & Li, 2012; Elwood et al., 2013; Ali & Schmid, 2014) and citizen data is now driving many successful applications. Among them, OpenStreetMap (Haklay & Weber, 2008) is producing geographic data (e.g., road networks) and this user-generated geographic data can present high location accuracy, comparable to survey products of government mapping agencies (e.g., Haklay, 2010). The eBird citizen science project (Sullivan et al., 2009) is documenting bird species (e.g., presence, abundance) with observations contributed by worldwide birders. For emergency management, citizen data are providing timely information for wildfires or earthquakes (Goodchild & Glennon, 2010; Zook et al., 2010). In the world’s remote areas, wildlife sightings can be solicited from farmers, herdsmen, and hunters whose livelihoods provide information on ecosystem services. For conservation programs with limited budgets, local citizens could serve as a cost-effective data source on wildlife distribution (e.g., Anadón et al., 2009). Several variables can be analysed with citizen scientists’ help like forest composition (Franklin, 1995), soil class and soil properties (Zhu et al., 2001; Scull et al., 2003; Zhu, 2008), species richness (Pittman et al., 2007), and habitat suitability (Franklin & Miller, 2009). Some authors consider that the error and bias in citizen science data are similar to those found in other large-scale datasets so they argue that there are statistical approaches used in ecological contexts that can be used in this field presenting good results (Bird et al., 2013). Most importantly, what is key is to carefully think about the specific objectives of each study and evaluate whether the potential biases induced from the specific nature of the data collection process can be incorporated, rather than condemning altoghether of blindly use citizen science data.

1.3. Performance Evaluation of Citizen Science

The emergence of citizen science projects, with meaningful contributions to science, policy, management and society, lead to the need for creating measures to evaluate these contributions in terms of their number, their effectiveness and the quality of the outputs (Bonney et al., 2009; Jordan et al., 2012; Riesch & Potter, 2014; Chandler et al., 2016).

Some measures concerning scientific outputs may be the easier ones to identify, for example: • Number of papers using citizen science data published in peer-reviewed journals; • Number of citations of results;

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• Number and budgets of grants received for citizen science research; • Size and quality of citizen science databases;

• Number of graduate theses completed using citizen science data.

Measures concerning management and policy outputs from citizen science might be adapted from other areas like, for instance, sustainability research. Some examples could be:

• Number and budgets of citizen science projects and initiatives (e.g., BioBlitz) funded by companies, public institutions or municipalities;

• Number of political and management decisions supported by citizen science initiatives; • Improved attitude towards science.

Measures of the outcomes to society are more difficult to identify (Trumbull et al., 2000; Brossard et al., 2005; Bonney et al., 2009, Jordan et al., 2012). Some possible examples could be:

• Frequency of media exposure of results from scientific literacy outcomes; • Number of participants and visits to citizen science projects Web sites; • Duration of involvement by project participants;

• Improved participant understanding of science content; • Enhanced participant understanding of science processes; • Better participant attitudes toward science;

• Improved participant skills for conducting science; • Increased participant interest in science as a career.

There must be demonstrated evidence that citizen science projects are important to address global and local environmental challenges. The need of investing in projects’ evaluation is fundamental to give further support to the field although a systematic evaluation is still a gap that should be filled (Chandler et al., 2016).

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1.4. Citizen Science and Biodiversity Observations

Biodiversity data has been gathered in global biodiversity monitoring databases such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), which shares freely accessible biodiversity data, including digitalized data in museum collections. Many natural history museums around the world have contributed to the GBIF, and there are currently more than 700 million entries of biodiversity (occurrence) data. Existing data has however an uneven distribution. Several countries and regions (e.g., the Asia-Pacific region), have much less data than do the European Union or North America (GBIF, 2012; Yahara et al., 2012). By understanding the potential of citizen science, GBIF started to receive data from citizen science projects and nowadays these projects became important data providers However, the problems of inaccurate information (e.g., misidentification) and copyright issues still persist and need to be taken in consideration (e.g., impossible-to-share media files; Miyazaki et al., 2014).

International treaties such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species identify the necessity to evaluate change in the status and trends of global biodiversity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services also has as one of its four main functions to “perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity” (IPBES, 2013). The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) proposed a set of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs; Pereira et al., 2013) to track global biodiversity change. In all these actions citizen science is being taken into consideration to evaluate regional and global changes in the trends and status of biodiversity (Pereira & Cooper, 2006; Pereira et al., 2010; Schmeller et al., 2015; Chandler et al., 2016; Proença et al., 2016; Chandler et al., 2017; Pereira et al., 2017) (Figure 1.5).

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Figure 1.5. – Citizen scientists collecting biodiversity and environmental data. Credits OPAL, GLOBE via

UCAR, © Yifei Zhang, © Earthwatch

Citizen science is nowadays an emergent topic, critical for biodiversity observations and essential for public engagement. This thesis arose in this context, aiming to approach some of these issues with the perspective of helping to fill existing knowledge gaps.

1.5. Aims and Structure of the Thesis

This thesis aims to analyse different viewpoints of citizen science from local to global, from project design to practical uses for science, from the motivational perspective of users up to a geographical perspective. An interdisciplinary approach is followed applying tools from different scientific domains.

In particular, this thesis aims at addressing the following research questions:

• What is the social context of a citizen science project and what should be taken into consideration when designing a citizen science project?

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• What are the current and the potential benefits and limitations, for different citizen groups, in participating in a project of citizen science for registering biodiversity, using BioDiversity4All as a case-study?

• What are the main intrinsic motivations to participate in citizen science projects? • What are the variables that drive the locations where users are making observations? • Can we use citizen science data to estimate climatic niches and species distributions?

To address these questions, I organised the thesis in five chapters (Chapter 2 to Chapter 6), each corresponding to a submitted or published contribution (paper or book chapter), contextualised by a general introduction (Chapter 1) and a synthesis chapter further addressing future perspectives for citizen science projects (Chapter 7).

In Chapter 2, I provide the social context of citizen science projects, exploring briefly the history of citizen science and identifying the main stakeholders involved in these projects. In this chapter I also analyse the main points to take into consideration, from the perspectives of these different stakeholders, when designing a citizen science project. The work presented in this chapter was published as: Tiago, P. 2016. Social Context of Citizen Science Projects. In: Analyzing the Role of

Citizen Science in Modern Research, Luigi Ceccaroni & Jaume Piera (eds). IGI Global, 168-191.

In Chapter 3, I identify and analyse the current and potential benefits of biodiversity registering, and as well as its limitations, for different societal groups (from individual citizens to large companies), that ultimately contribute to an increased societal knowledge about natural values and an improved biodiversity-related education and higher environment and conservation awareness. This analysis was based on the experience of BioDiversity4All project, a Portuguese nationwide project with a bottom-up approach based on locally organized groups and their initiatives. The work presented in this chapter was submitted to Citizen Science Theory and

Practice as: Tiago, P., Ribeiro, F., Gromicho, M., Ferreira, L.T., & Santos-Reis, M. Involving citizens

and stakeholders in biodiversity registering: the importance of a customized bottom-up approach to engage citizen groups.

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In Chapter 4, I study the main motivations for the participation of citizens in a Portuguese citizen science project, and assess the pattern of motivations across different groups of users. The work presented in this chapter was submitted to Nature Conservation as: Tiago, P., Gouveia, M.J., Capinha, C., Santos-Reis, M. & Pereira, H.M. Frequency of participation predicts participation motivations in citizen science activities.

In Chapter 5, I compare the effect of geographic variables on the number of observations registered among different taxonomic groups in BioDiversity4All project. The work presented in this chapter was submitted to Plos One as Tiago, P., Ceia-Hasse, A., Marques, T.A., Capinha, C. & Pereira, H.M. Spatial distribution of citizen science casuistic observations for different taxonomic groups.

In Chapter 6, I assess whether opportunistic citizen science databases are viable data sources to use in the modelling of species distributions and test if species attributes can indicate the reliability and completeness of the opportunistic distribution data. The work presented in this chapter was published in Basic and Applied Ecology as: Tiago, P., Pereira, H.M. & Capinha, C. 2017. Using citizen science data to estimate climatic niches and species distributions. DOI: 10.1016/j.baae.2017.04.001.

Finally, the last chapter synthesises the main findings of the previous chapters and addresses future perspectives for citizen science projects.

In Appendix A and B I include two publications that are complementary to the work presented in this thesis. In Appendix A: Proença, V., Martin, L.J., Pereira, H.M., Fernandez, M., McRae, L., Belnap, J., Böhm, M., Brummitt, N., García-Moreno, J., Gregory, R.D., Honrado, J.P., Jürgens, N., Opige, M., Schmeller, D.S., Tiago, P., & van Swaay, C.A.M. 2016. Global biodiversity monitoring: From data sources to essential biodiversity variables. Biological Conservation. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2016.07.014. In Appendix B: Chandler, M., See, L., Buesching, C.D., Cousins, J.A., Gillies, C., Kays, R.W., Newman, C., Pereira, H.M. & Tiago, P. 2017. Involving citizen scientists in biodiversity observation. In The GEO Handbook on Biodiversity Observation Networks (eds M. Walters & R.J. Scholes), 211–237. Springer International Publishing, Cham. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-27288-7_9.

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2. Social Context of Citizen Science Projects

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy” Jane Goodall

Tiago, P. 2016. Social Context of Citizen Science Projects. In: Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science

in Modern Research, Luigi Ceccaroni & Jaume Piera (eds). IGI Global, 168-191.

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief history of citizen science in our societies, identifies the main stakeholders involved in projects of this topic, and analyses the main points to take into consideration, from a social perspective, when designing a citizen-science project: communicating; recruiting and motivating participants; fostering innovation, interdisciplinarity and group dynamics; promoting cultural changes, healthy habits, inclusion, awareness and education; and guiding policy goals and decisions. Different governance structures, and a coexistence of different approaches, are analysed together with how they suit different communities and scientific studies.

Keywords:

history, project design, stakeholders.

2.1. Introduction

Citizen science engages the general public with scientific research activities, and while not new, is becoming a mainstream approach to collect data on a variety of scientific disciplines (Miller-Rushing et al., 2012). The consolidation of citizen science can be perceived from the adoption of a formal name, increased research about the field and formalization of international associations. Citizen science maturity has advanced with technology innovations of recent years.

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Societies are facing rapid changes in values, interests and expectations. The growth of social networks and collaborative web projects has implications for the relations between scientists, decision makers and different societal groups. Citizen science is growing to be a mechanism that allows citizens to have an active role in science development and in dealing with important environmental and scientific questions.

Scientists who support the rise in citizen science recognize the benefit of volunteer contribution to science in terms of increased scale, data collection and analysis, outreach capacity, while dealing with budget constraints. Consequently, an increasing number of studies have started to work with volunteer citizens, helped by easily accessible technological tools. Awareness among scientists for these social changes has increased, generally in a gradual way, but faster in countries with a higher tradition of public participation, especially scientific participation (Hess, 2010).

Citizen science can also have a positive impact on society and support sustainable development, by fostering connections between environment, society and economy and overcoming barriers between disciplines (Giddings et al., 2002).

Given its collaborative nature, citizen science is characterized by a wide range of stakeholders, whose motivations and interactions can be determinant for the success of a citizen science project and thus should be carefully taken into account on project design.

This chapter provides a brief history of citizen science and identifies the main stakeholders involved in these projects. The chapter then analyses the main points to take into consideration, from the perspectives of these different stakeholders, when designing a citizen science project.

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2.2. The history of citizen science in our societies

For centuries, scientific research was conducted by amateurs (people that were not paid to do science) (Vetter, 2011). Professionalization of science, in the late 19th_{century, drew those}

amateurs away from the scientific world and created a big gap between “real scientists” (people that are paid to do science) and citizens interested in those subjects (Vetter, 2011).

John Ray, Alfred Russell Wallace, Gregor Mendel are prime examples of amateurs who produced incredible scientific advances. John Ray published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology and his classification of plants in Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy (Raven, 1942). Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. His best known work was on the theory of evolution through natural selection and his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858 (Raby, 2001). Gregor Mendel was a friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the modern science of genetics. His pea plant experiments established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance (Weiling, 1991). These individuals were largely pursuing research because of an innate interest in particular topics or questions (Vetter, 2011) and were recognized experts in their field, conducting research indistinguishable from today’s professional scientists.

On a different level of participation, though not yet called citizen scientists, general people have also been involved in scientific activities on a volunteer basis for centuries, documenting observations of nature. Farmers, hunters and amateur naturalists were some of the activities involved in collecting natural world data (Miller-Rushing et al., 2012). In the 18th_{century, Carl}

Linnaeus, collected, with the help of many volunteers, animal, plant, rock and fossils specimens and artifacts from around the world. For 1200 years court diarists in Kyoto, have been recording dates of the traditional cherry blossom festival (Primack et al., 2009) and in China citizens and officials have been tracking outbreaks of locust for at least 350 years (Tian et al., 2011).

In some specific science issues, such as weather, astronomy and bird surveys, there is a long history of citizen science, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries and center and northern European countries such as England, United States of America, Australia, Netherlands or Finland.

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The project National Weather Service - Cooperative Observer Program (NWS-COOP) has been collecting basic weather data across United States since 1890 with results supporting much of what we know about variability and directional changes in climate (Miller-Rushing et al., 2012). With a two-fold mission of providing observational meteorological data and helping to measure long-term climate changes, the project has more than 8,700 volunteers taking observations in farms, in urban and suburban areas, National Parks, seashores, and mountaintops (NOAA, 2014).

In the astronomy area, the British government funded, in 1874, the Transit of Venus project to measure the Earth’s distance to the Sun. This project engaged the admiralty to support data collection all over the globe and recruited the services of amateur astronomers (Ratcliff, 2008).

Ornithology has a long linking history with citizen science. Bird monitoring in Europe goes back to 1749, when amateurs, in Finland, collected data on timing of migration (Greenwood, 2007). Wells Cooke, a member of the American Ornithologists’ Union, developed one of the earliest known formal citizen science programs in the United States, in the late 18th_{century. This project,}

overtime, transformed into today’s North American Bird Phenology Program. Citizens involved collect, on cards, information about migratory bird patterns and population figures. Those cards are being scanned and recorded into a public database for historical analysis (Dickinson et al., 2010). Another example of one of the oldest citizen science programs in the United States, which is still active, is the Christmas Bird Count, sponsored by the National Audubon Society. Since 1900, the organization has sponsored a bird count that runs from December 14 through January 5 each year. An experienced birder leads a group of volunteers as they collect information about local populations of birds. More than 2,000 groups operate across the United States and Canada (Dickinson et al., 2010).

Nowadays the focus of citizen science is changing from the traditional “scientists using citizens as data collectors” to citizens as scientists (Lakshminarayanan, 2007). In this new era of citizen science projects, citizens can participate at the diverse stages of the scientific process from co-creating a project with a scientist, following up all the steps of the project, raising new questions, collecting or analysing data, producing reports and disseminating findings (Tweddle et al., 2012). Depending on the desired level of engagement in science, different models of action can be

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adopted, such as pooling of resources, collective intelligence, grassroots activities, data collection, analysis of tasks, serious games or participatory experiments (Socientize, 2014).

Citizen science has already a long history and has recently begun to evolve into a broad research methodology with new applications and different stakeholders’ approaches. Several historical case studies and personalities, involved with this subject, may help us analyse what can be the future direction of citizen science.

2.3. Who are the different stakeholders involved in citizen science

projects?

Citizen science, although in its basic form, was viewed as a partnership between volunteers and scientists to answer real world questions (Cohn, 2008), was expanded to a multiplicity of stakeholders, ranging from research scientists, teachers, students, managers, environmental organizations, and politicians (Bonney et al., 2009), due to its potential for educational purposes, raising awareness and driving policy changes, among other reasons. These stakeholders have many different interests in citizen science, and face particular constraints in their involvement.

Despite the considerable amount of stakeholders involved, clustering them into four groups: citizen scientists, scientists, other societal groups and policy makers, allows us to analyse the project design from these four different perspectives. Citizen scientists and scientists are directly involved in the scientific process, while other societal groups and policy makers are more indirectly involved, e.g. using data, promoting education, guiding policy goals and decisions or giving answers to social concerns.

Assuring a good and stable relationship between the interests of these groups is important for the project’s success (Figure 2.1).

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Figure 2.1 – Groups of stakeholders involved in citizen science projects.

Thinking specifically in the citizen scientists, depending on the project aims and activities, target people are diverse and may include hobby and professional groups such as schools, students, scouts, naturalists, tourists, sports enthusiasts, farmers, fishermen, or a multiplicity of actors. Engaging these different stakeholders into a shared framework with some common and some specific means of communication are good ways to achieve results. Projects like eBird, iSpot and iNaturalis have in their objectives and strategies specific ways of involving and engaging different groups (Sullivan et al., 2009; Clow & Makriyannis, 2011; Bowser et al., 2014).

2.4. Points to take into consideration in project design

Project design is a crucial step in ensuring the effectiveness of the project and the capacity to achieve its goals (Raddick et al., 2009). When designing a project, this will inevitably involve trade-offs, e.g. gathering comprehensive, high quality data according to rigorous scientific protocols, and the ease of data collection (Hochachka et al., 2012). If the data collection is too complex or too time consuming, volunteers may lose their desire to participate and thus, understanding and adapting the program to the skills, expectations and interests of the volunteers is critical (Shirk et al., 2012).

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When designing a citizen science project, it is thus important to take into account a social perspective meaning the interactions generated between the different stakeholders, their collective co-existence, regardless of whether they are aware of it or not, and of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

Although citizen science is nowadays a broad methodology used in many different scientific areas, there are several cross-cutting issues, common to all of them. Highlighting the importance of taking a stakeholder view when designing a citizen science project, table 2.1 summarizes issues to take into consideration, which will be analysed in detail below. Some, such as motivation or awareness, are important for several stakeholders, but in very different ways and assuming varying degrees of importance.

Table 2.1 – Points to take into consideration for different stakeholder groups, in a citizen science

project design.

Project design

Citizen Scientists Scientists Other Societal Groups Policy Makers • Communicating and recruiting participants • Motivating participants • Promoting education • Giving feedback • Enabling personal recognition and reward • Taking into account work scale preference • Enabling outputs for scientific studies • Assuring data quality • Sharing open source results • Fostering innovation, interdisciplinarity and group dynamics • Motivating participants • Overcoming reluctance • Giving answers to social concerns • Promoting healthy habits • Promoting inclusion • Promoting awareness and education • Taking into consideration cultural differences • Overcoming reluctance • Sharing open source results • Guiding policy goals and decisions • Giving answers to social concerns • Promoting awareness • Overcoming reluctance

Improving citizen science as a tool biodiversity monitoring

FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS

Improving citizen science as a tool for biodiversity monitoring

Doutoramento em Biologia

Biodiversidade

Patrícia Maria Nunes Tiago

Tese orientada por:

Professor Doutor Henrique Miguel Pereira

Professora Doutora Margarida Santos-Reis

Doutor César Capinha

FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS

Improving citizen science as a tool for biodiversity monitoring

Doutoramento em Biologia

Biodiversidade

Patrícia Maria Nunes Tiago

Tese orientada por:

Doutor Henrique Miguel Pereira

Doutora Margarida Santos-Reis

Doutor César Capinha

Resumo

Palavras-chave:

Abstract

Keywords:

Acknowledgements

Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Citizen Science in Context

1.2. Benefits and Limitations of Citizen Science

1.3. Performance Evaluation of Citizen Science

1.4. Citizen Science and Biodiversity Observations

1.5. Aims and Structure of the Thesis

2. Social Context of Citizen Science Projects

Abstract

Keywords:

2.1. Introduction

2.2. The history of citizen science in our societies

2.3. Who are the different stakeholders involved in citizen science

projects?

2.4. Points to take into consideration in project design