Quality of non-expert citizen science data collected for habitat type conservation status assessment in Natura 2000 protected areas

Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics in education is commonly referred to as STEM. The last decades illustrate that our society is transferring into an ever accelerating technological environment. In parallel, the general public became an important driving force in collecting citizen science data to trigger legislative pressure and impact on policy makers to accelerate the improvement of their quality of life. That practice is currently extending into the environmental impact of noise related quality of life. This publication suggests to merge those educational STEM goals, citizen science monitoring and the need for population based noise monitoring data for efficient policy support. The presented educational project can be regarded as a proof-of-concept and can be repeated in different schools and classes every year. This approach has the potential to acquire abundant noise monitoring data and provides an unbiased population sampling dataset by design. This population driven involvement allows to assess real-life and long-term noise policy impact and could become a fundamental pillar in achieving the overall societal goal of improving noise related environmental quality of life.

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Landscape Changes in Protected Areas in Poland

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su14020753 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 753

Author(s):

Anna Zbierska

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Protected Areas ◽

Conservation Status ◽

Coniferous Forest ◽

Ecological Integrity ◽

Natura 2000 ◽

Nature Protection ◽

Natura 2000 Network ◽

Buffer Zones ◽

Legal Forms

Land-Use Cover Changes (LUCCs) are one of the main problems for the preservation of landscapes and natural biodiversity. Protected Areas (PAs) do not escape this threat. Poland is among the European leaders in terms of the variety of landscapes and the share of an area designated as a protected area. However, as many as 78% of the habitats have poor or bad conservation status based on EEA reports. This article analyzes the LUCCs between 2000 and 2018 in various types of the Polish legal forms of nature protection areas and the European Natura 2000 network within the country. The research material was: the data of Corine Land Cover (CLC), the Central Register of Nature Protection Forms, and high-resolution layers, such as HRL and orthophotos. The results were compiled according to the CLC class and forms of protection. The matrix of transformations showed that the most frequently transformed CLC class was 312 (coniferous forest). It was transformed into class 324 (transitional woodland shrubs). The changes in PAs were usually smaller than in the surrounding buffer zones, which may indicate their effectiveness. The exception was the areas of the European Natura 2000 network. The scale of land-cover flows (LCFs) changed within particular forms of protected areas, though afforestation and deforestation predominating in all area types. National reserves and parks were the most stable in terms of land cover structures. However, human settlements increased around the protected areas, potentially increasing threats to their ecological integrity.

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A revision of the genus Trithrinax (Cryosophileae, Coryphoideae, Arecaceae)

Phytotaxa ◽

10.11646/phytotaxa.136.1.1 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 136 (1) ◽

pp. 1 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

ÁNGELA CANO ◽

MATHIEU PERRET ◽

FRED W. STAUFFER

Keyword(s):

Morphological Analysis ◽

Conservation Status ◽

Natural Populations ◽

Herbarium Specimens ◽

Literature Research ◽

Distribution Maps ◽

Area Of Occupancy ◽

Status Assessment ◽

Species Descriptions

The palm genus Trithrinax is revised and three species and four varieties are accepted (T. brasiliensis var. brasiliensis, T. brasiliensis var. acanthocoma, T. campestris, T. schizophylla var. schizophylla and T. schizophylla var. biflabellata comb. nov.). This taxonomic treatment presents detailed and complete description of all taxa, based on the studies of natural populations in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, the morphological analysis of herbarium specimens (including all available types) and an exhaustive literature research. Illustrations are presented for all taxa and identification keys to the species and varieties are proposed. Species descriptions include updated distribution maps, information about their ecology, taxonomic notes and a compilation of common names and uses. The conservation status assessment reveals an important level of threatening for all taxa, ranging from vulnerable (VU) to endangered (EN), mainly due to the decline of the area of occupancy and the quality of habitat.

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Perspectives on Citizen Science Data Quality

Frontiers in Climate ◽

10.3389/fclim.2021.615032 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Author(s):

Robert R. Downs ◽

Hampapuram K. Ramapriyan ◽

Ge Peng ◽

Yaxing Wei

Keyword(s):

Quality Control ◽

Data Quality ◽

Quality Assessment ◽

Citizen Science ◽

Data Reuse ◽

Quality Information ◽

Science Data ◽

Conducting Research

Information about data quality helps potential data users to determine whether and how data can be used and enables the analysis and interpretation of such data. Providing data quality information improves opportunities for data reuse by increasing the trustworthiness of the data. Recognizing the need for improving the quality of citizen science data, we describe quality assessment and quality control (QA/QC) issues for these data and offer perspectives on aspects of improving or ensuring citizen science data quality and for conducting research on related issues.

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Designing online species identification tools for biological recording: the impact on data quality and citizen science learning

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.5965 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

pp. e5965 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Nirwan Sharma ◽

Laura Colucci-Gray ◽

Advaith Siddharthan ◽

Richard Comont ◽

René van der Wal

Keyword(s):

Species Identification ◽

Citizen Science ◽

Scientific Data ◽

Science Data ◽

Lay People ◽

Digital Identification ◽

Quality Of Learning ◽

The Impact ◽

Interface Type

In recent years, the number and scale of environmental citizen science programmes that involve lay people in scientific research have increased rapidly. Many of these initiatives are concerned with the recording and identification of species, processes which are increasingly mediated through digital interfaces. Here, we address the growing need to understand the particular role of digital identification tools, both in generating scientific data and in supporting learning by lay people engaged in citizen science activities pertaining to biological recording communities. Starting from two well-known identification tools, namely identification keys and field guides, this study focuses on the decision-making and quality of learning processes underlying species identification tasks, by comparing three digital interfaces designed to identify bumblebee species. The three interfaces varied with respect to whether species were directly compared or filtered by matching on visual features; and whether the order of filters was directed by the interface or a user-driven open choice. A concurrent mixed-methods approach was adopted to compare how these different interfaces affected the ability of participants to make correct and quick species identifications, and to better understand how participants learned through using these interfaces. We found that the accuracy of identification and quality of learning were dependent upon the interface type, the difficulty of the specimen on the image being identified and the interaction between interface type and ‘image difficulty’. Specifically, interfaces based on filtering outperformed those based on direct visual comparison across all metrics, and an open choice of filters led to higher accuracy than the interface that directed the filtering. Our results have direct implications for the design of online identification technologies for biological recording, irrespective of whether the goal is to collect higher quality citizen science data, or to support user learning and engagement in these communities of practice.

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Identifying priority conservation areas for recovering large carnivores using citizen science data

10.1101/454603 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

A-S. Bonnet-Lebrun ◽

A.A. Karamanlidis ◽

M. de Gabriel Hernando ◽

I. Renner ◽

O. Gimenez

Keyword(s):

Protected Areas ◽

Citizen Science ◽

Process Model ◽

Conservation Priorities ◽

Suitable Habitat ◽

Spatial Processes ◽

Conservation Areas ◽

Science Data ◽

Anthropogenic Landscapes ◽

Brown Bears

AbstractUnderstanding the processes related to wildlife recoveries is not only essential in solving human – wildlife conflicts, but also for identifying priority conservation areas and in turn, for effective conservation planning. We used data from a large citizen science program to study the spatial processes related to the demographic and genetic recovery of brown bears in Greece and to identify new areas for their conservation. This was achieved by visually comparing our data with an estimation of the past distribution of brown bears in Greece and by using a Point Process Model to model habitat suitability, and then comparing our results with the current distribution of brown bear records and with that of protected areas. Our results indicate that in the last 15 years bears may have increased their range by as much as 100%, by occupying mainly anthropogenic landscapes and areas with suitable habitat that are currently not legally protected, thus creating a new conservation reality for the species in Greece. This development dictates the re-evaluation of the national management and conservation priorities for brown bears in Greece by focusing in establishing new protected areas that will safeguard their recovery. Our conservation approach is a swift and cheap way of identifying priority conservation areas, while gaining important insights on the spatial processes associated with population recoveries. It will help prioritize conservation actions for brown bears in Greece and may serve as a model conservation approach to countries facing financial and logistic constraints in the monitoring of local biodiversity or facing challenges in managing rapid population recoveries. Our conservation approach appeared also to be better suited to identifying priority areas for conservation in areas with recovering wildlife populations and may therefore be used as an “early-warning” conservation system.

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Quality Control and Bias Correction of Citizen Science Wind Observations

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2419 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jieyu Chen ◽

Kirien Whan ◽

Kate Saunders

Keyword(s):

Quality Control ◽

Wind Speed ◽

Citizen Science ◽

Bias Correction ◽

Temporal Consistency ◽

Science Data ◽

Wind Speeds ◽

Systematic Biases ◽

Official Data

Wind observations collected at citizen science wind stations (CWS) could be an invaluable resource in climate and meteorology studies, yet these observations are underutilised because scientists do not have confidence in their quality. While a few studies have considered the quality of CWS wind speed observations, none have addressed the biases, likely caused by instrumentation biases and station placement errors. These systematic biases introduce spatial inconsistencies that prevent comparison of these stations spatially and limit the possible usage of the data. In this paper, we address these issues by improving and developing new methods for identifying suspect observations and calibrating systematic biases in the wind speed observations collected at CWS.Our complete quality control system consists of four steps: (1) performing within-station quality controls to check the plausible range and the temporal consistency of observations; (2) correcting the bias, mainly caused by low sensor heights, using empirical quantile mapping; (3) implementing between-station quality control that compares observations from neighbouring stations to identify spatially inconsistent observations; (4) providing estimates of the true wind when CWS falsely report zero wind speeds, as a complement to bias correction.We apply these methods to CWS from the Weather Observation Website (WOW) in the Netherlands, comparing the citizen science data with official data, and statistically assessing the improvements in data quality after each step. The results demonstrate that the citizen science wind data are comparable with official data after quality control checks and bias corrections. Our quality assessment methods therefore give confidence to CWS, converting their observations into a usable data product and an invaluable resource for applications in need of additional wind observations.

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Romanian Natura 2000 Network: Evaluation of the Threats and Pressures through the Corine Land Cover Dataset

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12132075 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (13) ◽

pp. 2075 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Adrian Ursu ◽

Cristian Constantin Stoleriu ◽

Constantin Ion ◽

Vasile Jitariu ◽

Andrei Enea

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Protected Areas ◽

Conservation Status ◽

Natura 2000 ◽

Land Cover Changes ◽

Corine Land Cover ◽

Before And After ◽

Natura 2000 Site ◽

New Guidelines ◽

The Impact

The present paper aims to evaluate if the Natura 2000 sites in Romania are placed over dynamic areas from a land cover changes perspective, or if they are placed in areas with low human interest and what the impact of these changes are. The effectiveness of conservation measures was addressed by analyzing the number of land cover changes and their areas in Natura 2000 sites, before and after declaring them as protected areas. Corine Land Cover (CLC) data were used as a tool to identify threats and pressures from each Natura 2000 site, and also assess whether land cover changes are more frequent in sites with a high biodiversity index, compared to those with low diversity, in order to estimate the conservation status. Changes in the land cover during 1990–2018 are characterized by three types of events, from 1990 to 2000 with most changes recorded, followed by a relative period of stability from 2000 to 2012; the most dynamic period is from 2012 to 2018. The main changes are due to deforestation. Only 29.7% ROSCI (Romanian Sites of Community Importance) and 36.5% ROSPA (Romanian Special Protected Areas) sites are characterized by a good degree of conservation without or with low modifications regarding the land cover. The most frequent threats and pressures that were found through CLC changes in the ROSCIs in Romania are related to forestry, grazing, the extent of the urbanized environment and those related to agriculture. The correspondence between Corine Land Cover and Natura 2000 specific threats and pressures emphasizes new guidelines for the Corine Land Cover program; therefore, this correspondence can be a potential tool to get more information for Natura 2000 sites.

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Variation in Deadwood Microsites in Areas Designated under the Habitats Directive (Natura 2000)

Forests ◽

10.3390/f11050486 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 486

Author(s):

Leszek Bujoczek ◽

Stanisław Zięba ◽

Małgorzata Bujoczek

Keyword(s):

Logistic Regression ◽

Regression Model ◽

Logistic Regression Model ◽

Habitat Type ◽

Natura 2000 ◽

Habitats Directive ◽

Managed Forests ◽

Habitat Types ◽

Living Tree

The continuing decline in biodiversity presents a major environmental protection challenge. The conservation of sufficiently extensive and diverse habitats requires an array of coordinated actions, often involving large areas. While a set of conservation objectives have been defined for the Natura 2000 network, no universal methods of accomplishing them have been specified, and so they must be designed by individual Member States. Deadwood volume and the density of large deadwood pieces are widely used for evaluating the quality of forest habitat types designated under the Habitats Directive. In the present study, data from 5557 sample plots were used to evaluate the mean values of the two deadwood indicators as well as the ratio of deadwood volume to living tree volume for each of the 13 habitat types in Poland. In addition, a logistic regression model was constructed to evaluate the effects of terrain, site, and tree stand characteristics as well as protection type on deadwood volume in Natura 2000 areas. Mean deadwood volume varied greatly between habitat types, with the lowest values found for Central European lichen Scots pine forests (91T0–2.5 m3 ha−1) and Old acidophilous oak woods (9190–4.4 m3 ha−1), and the highest for Riparian mixed forests (91F0–43.1 m3 ha−1) and Acidophilous Picea forests of the montane to alpine levels (9410–55.4 m3 ha−1). The ratio of deadwood volume to living tree volume ranged from approx. 1%–17%. Additionally, the presence of large deadwood differed among habitat types: in some, there were no deadwood pieces with a diameter of ≥50 cm, while their maximum density was 6.1 pieces ha−1. The logistic regression model showed that the likelihood of a habitat type to have a ‘favorable conservation status’ as defined by deadwood abundance (a threshold of at least 20 m3 ha−1 according to Polish manuals on habitat type evaluation) increased with sample plot elevation, site fertility, and moisture, as well as stand age and volume. Positive effects were also observed for forests under strict and active protection versus managed forests. Planned efforts are necessary to enhance the quality of habitats with insufficient deadwood, especially in managed forests. Special attention should be given to areas that are readily accessible due to gentle terrain and low site moisture. Furthermore, younger stands on less fertile sites may require intervention to promote deadwood accumulation. We recommend retaining a certain proportion of mature stands until natural death and decomposition. Increasing the density of large deadwood is currently one of the most pressing conservation needs in most habitat types.

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