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Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data

While the role of citizen science in engaging the public and providing large-scale datasets has been demonstrated, the nature of and potential for this science to supplement environmental monitoring efforts by government agencies has not yet been fully explored. To this end, the present study invest...

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Autores principales: Hadj-Hammou, Jeneen, Loiselle, Steven, Ophof, Daniel, Thornhill, Ian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718424/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29211752
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188507
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author Hadj-Hammou, Jeneen
Loiselle, Steven
Ophof, Daniel
Thornhill, Ian
author_facet Hadj-Hammou, Jeneen
Loiselle, Steven
Ophof, Daniel
Thornhill, Ian
author_sort Hadj-Hammou, Jeneen
collection PubMed
description While the role of citizen science in engaging the public and providing large-scale datasets has been demonstrated, the nature of and potential for this science to supplement environmental monitoring efforts by government agencies has not yet been fully explored. To this end, the present study investigates the complementarity of a citizen science programme to agency monitoring of water quality. The Environment Agency (EA) is the governmental public body responsible for, among other duties, managing and monitoring water quality and water resources in England. FreshWater Watch (FWW) is a global citizen science project that supports community monitoring of freshwater quality. FWW and EA data were assessed for their spatio-temporal complementarity by comparing the geographical and seasonal coverage of nitrate (N-NO(3)) sampling across the River Thames catchment by the respective campaigns between spring 2013 and winter 2015. The analysis reveals that FWW citizen science-collected data complements EA data by filling in both gaps in the spatial and temporal coverage as well as gaps in waterbody type and size. In addition, partial spatio-temporal overlap in sampling efforts by the two actors is discovered, but EA sampling is found to be more consistent than FWW sampling. Statistical analyses indicate that regardless of broader geographical overlap in sampling effort, FWW sampling sites are associated with a lower stream order and water bodies of smaller surface areas than EA sampling sites. FWW also samples more still-water body sites than the EA. As a possible result of such differences in sampling tendencies, nitrate concentrations, a measure of water quality, are lower for FWW sites than EA sites. These findings strongly indicate that citizen science has clear potential to complement agency monitoring efforts by generating information on freshwater ecosystems that would otherwise be under reported.
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spelling pubmed-57184242017-12-15 Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data Hadj-Hammou, Jeneen Loiselle, Steven Ophof, Daniel Thornhill, Ian PLoS One Research Article While the role of citizen science in engaging the public and providing large-scale datasets has been demonstrated, the nature of and potential for this science to supplement environmental monitoring efforts by government agencies has not yet been fully explored. To this end, the present study investigates the complementarity of a citizen science programme to agency monitoring of water quality. The Environment Agency (EA) is the governmental public body responsible for, among other duties, managing and monitoring water quality and water resources in England. FreshWater Watch (FWW) is a global citizen science project that supports community monitoring of freshwater quality. FWW and EA data were assessed for their spatio-temporal complementarity by comparing the geographical and seasonal coverage of nitrate (N-NO(3)) sampling across the River Thames catchment by the respective campaigns between spring 2013 and winter 2015. The analysis reveals that FWW citizen science-collected data complements EA data by filling in both gaps in the spatial and temporal coverage as well as gaps in waterbody type and size. In addition, partial spatio-temporal overlap in sampling efforts by the two actors is discovered, but EA sampling is found to be more consistent than FWW sampling. Statistical analyses indicate that regardless of broader geographical overlap in sampling effort, FWW sampling sites are associated with a lower stream order and water bodies of smaller surface areas than EA sampling sites. FWW also samples more still-water body sites than the EA. As a possible result of such differences in sampling tendencies, nitrate concentrations, a measure of water quality, are lower for FWW sites than EA sites. These findings strongly indicate that citizen science has clear potential to complement agency monitoring efforts by generating information on freshwater ecosystems that would otherwise be under reported. Public Library of Science 2017-12-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5718424/ /pubmed/29211752 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188507 Text en © 2017 Hadj-Hammou et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hadj-Hammou, Jeneen
Loiselle, Steven
Ophof, Daniel
Thornhill, Ian
Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
title Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
title_full Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
title_fullStr Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
title_full_unstemmed Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
title_short Getting the full picture: Assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
title_sort getting the full picture: assessing the complementarity of citizen science and agency monitoring data
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718424/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29211752
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188507
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