The Role of Citizen Science in Environmental Education

Citizen Science is increasing in popularity and used by many academics, community groups and Non-Governmental Organizations in scientific data collection. Despite this, little is known about the motivations and experiences of those who contribute to citizen science projects, nor about the impacts of involvement in citizen science upon the individual. Moreover, few have considered the pedagogic process that individuals undergo as they participate in these activities. Citizen science practitioners and program developers stand to benefit from increased understanding of these experiences in terms of their capacity to enhance environmental education. Such increased understanding of the implications of citizen science may also promote the development of sustainability education. This chapter synthesizes insights from existing literature, policy documents and practical projects to explore the pedagogic potential of the convergence of citizen science and environmental education. The chapter concludes that progressive evaluation approaches are needed to complement what is an emergent field.

Smart Activation of Citizens

This chapter focuses on how, by “activating” the citizen's engagement in the research process, the scientific community has a smart way to benefit from the wisdom of the “crowd”. There are countless success stories in which citizens participate, contributing with their knowledge, cognitive capacity, creativity, opinion, and skills. However, for many scientists, the lack of familiarity with the particular nature of citizen participation, which is usually anonymous and volatile, turns into a barrier for its adoption. This chapter presents a problem-based typology for citizen-science projects that aims to help scientists to choose the best strategy for engaging and counting on citizen participation based on the scientific problem at hand; and some examples are included. Moreover, the chapter discusses the main challenges for researchers who intend to start involving the citizens in order to solve their specific scientific needs.

More Than Just Networking for Citizen Science

Citizen science activity is growing rapidly around the world and diversifies into new disciplines with recent advances in technology. This expansion is accompanied by the formation of associations and networks dedicated to citizen science practitioners, which aim at supporting citizen science as a research approach. This chapter examines how four such organizations in the United States, Europe, Australia, and China have begun to take shape, and are working with citizen science communities and stakeholders in respective regions and globally. Challenges and future plans of these groups are also discussed. This chapter identifies three core roles of citizen science practitioner organization: 1) establishing communities of practitioners, 2) building expertise through sharing of existing and developing new knowledge, and 3) representing community interests. By focusing on this hitherto neglected phenomenon, the authors aim to stimulate further research, discussion and critical reflection on these central agents in the emerging citizen science landscape.

Surface Water Information Collection

This chapter's starting premise is that for decades the United States Environmental Protection Agency region subsuming most of the Great Lakes watershed has been partially monitored by private citizens, but collected data have been underutilized by water managers, scientists, and policymakers. Today, citizens with only a smartphone can dramatically increase our understanding of surface water, help managers and policymakers, and educate the general public about the quality of water. The US Clean Water Act and National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations have helped to coordinate citizen scientists and direct funds to surface-water monitoring. And more contributors are being solicited and trained to help with the enormous task of monitoring lakes and streams. At the same time, technology allows citizens with a smartphone to accomplish what previously required experts in a lab: to act for clean water!

Can Citizen Science Seriously Contribute to Policy Development?

This chapter considers the potential for citizen science to contribute to policy development. A background to evidence-based policy making is given, and the requirement for data to be robust, reliable and, increasingly, cost-effective is noted. The potential for the use of ‘co-design' strategies with stakeholders, to add value to their engagement as well as provide more meaningful data that can contribute to policy development, is presented and discussed. Barriers to uptake can be institutional and the quality of data used in evidence-based policy making will always need to be fully assured. Data must be appropriate to the decision making process at hand and there is potential for citizen science to fill important, existing data-gaps.

Citizen Observatories as Advanced Learning Environments

Citizen Observatories are the technological platforms where a diverse range of tools are developed, such as web portals, smartphone apps, electronic devices, that allow the development of citizen science projects, particularly those with the principal objective of large scale participation of the people, covering large geographical areas and long periods of time. These new observatories integrate the latest Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to connect the citizens digitally, improve their observational capabilities and provide information flows. The concept of Citizen Observatories offers great possibilities as an educational experience, precisely due to the opportunities offered by the participation of the people, with different levels and roles and therefore, it is assumed in terms of active collaboration of the citizens, in shared processes of knowledge creation. This is especially clear when we pay attention to the complexity of the challenges education must face today, within the framework of a society of knowledge like ours.

Citizen-Driven Geographic Information Science

This chapter shows how global environmental changes put society in front of new challenges, and how immediate and intense actions have to be undertaken in order to foster necessary progress in global sustainability research. The technological infrastructure has reached a status of ubiquitous computing and virtually unlimited data availability. Yet, the dynamic nature of the global environment makes continuous and in-situ monitoring challenging. Citizen-driven geographic information science can bridge this gap by building on inputs, observations, and the wisdom of the crowd, represented by the citizens themselves. This chapter argues for the important role of citizen science in geographic information science, presents its position in current research, and discusses future potential research streams, based on the participation by and collaboration with citizens. In particular, the chapter sheds light on three major pillars of the future of citizen-driven geographic information science, namely: big geo-data; education; and open science.

Citizen Science and Its Role in Sustainable Development

The chapter aims to analyse the role of citizen science in sustainable development, including case studies implementation, with specific focus on its suitability of citizen science in environmental sustainability. The authors structured this chapter in five sections: Background; Main focus; Solutions and recommendations for designing and executing citizen science initiatives; Future research directions with thoughts on the future role of citizen science; and Conclusion. In section of main focus, first, the authors reviewed the state of citizen science in sustainable development and explored the potential of citizen science for environmental research and governance. Second, authors identified and elaborated the core components that support the role of citizen science and demonstrated the practical approach to realize its objective. Third, using several citizens' observatories studies from various regions in Europe and within diverse environmental fields, authors highlighted the lessons learned, and reflected on major outcomes, challenges and opportunities.

Geographical Information Systems in Modern Citizen Science

This chapter shows how citizen-science initiatives have been known to exist for a long time, but only recently they were further enhanced thanks to technological and societal developments, such as the availability of mobile devices, the widespread use of the internet and the low cost of location devices. These developments shaped the geographic information system (GIS) world as it is known today: a group of technologies that allows retrieving, storing, analyzing and sharing spatial information, by people who are not necessarily GIS professionals. This chapter starts with a general background about GIS, adding then more detail in topics of particular relevance in the context of citizen science. The rest of the chapter is focused on reviewing and classifying the use of GIS in citizen-science initiatives; and some use cases are described in order to provide practical examples of the use of these technologies for solving specific spatial problems. The chapter closes with a brief discussion of the future of GIS in citizen science, in the light of current technological trends.

What Drives Citizens to Engage in ICT-Enabled Citizen Science?

In order for citizen science initiatives to pan out well, various actors need to be willing to engage in citizen science activities. The particular interest in this chapter lies with the citizens and their motivations to participate in ICT-enabled citizen science since, arguably, without citizen participation, there is no citizen science activity. The authors examine in detail what determines citizens' interest to share their weather-related data collected with Personal Weather Stations via online amateur networks and how these citizen activities could be up-scaled to address prevalent hydro-meteorological data gaps. A decision making theory is used to guide empirical research in three European countries. The results indicate no regional differences between the main drivers and incentives and raise the question whether weather observation is still a male-dominated activity in the digital age which would have implications for upscaling this citizen science initiative.