Project Roadkill observed a significant decrease in reported roadkills during the COVID-19-lockdown in spring 2020. A survey was conducted among the participants of the project to investigate the impact of the lockdown on the travel behaviour of citizen scientists and whether the observed decrease in roadkills was due to fewer animals being killed by traffic or due to citizen scientists staying at home and therefore reporting fewer killed animals. The majority of respondents reported that they felt they had reported fewer roadkills during the lockdown, regardless of whether or not their travel behaviour had changed.
Every year, thousands of amphibians are roadkilled on Austria's roads. Amphibian protection measures are widely available, but need to be installed in time for migration. The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG), the Austrian Society for Nature Conservation and the Natural History Museum Vienna set the goal to better predict the start of amphibian migrations. The analysis of more than 11,500 observations over 18 years shows that the flowering times of apricot and goat willow are good predictors of amphibian migration and can thus provide the starting signal for protective measures.
Citizen science has expanded rapidly over the past decades. Yet, defining citizen science and its boundaries remained a challenge, and this is reflected in the literature—for example in the proliferation of typologies and definitions. There is a need for identifying areas of agreement and disagreement within the citizen science practitioners community on what should be considered as citizen science activity. This paper describes the development and results of a survey that examined this issue, through the use of vignettes—short case descriptions that describe an activity, while asking the respondents to rate the activity on a scale from ‘not citizen science’ (0%) to ‘citizen science’ (100%). The survey included 50 vignettes, of which five were developed as clear cases of not-citizen science activities, five as widely accepted citizen science activities and the others addressing 10 factors and 61 sub-factors that can lead to controversy about an activity. The survey has attracted 333 respondents, who provided over 5100 ratings. The analysis demonstrates the plurality of understanding of what citizen science is and calls for an open understanding of what activities are included in the field.
The Sculptured resin bee (Megachile sculpturalis) is the first invasive bee species on the European continent. In the framework of this review, we present this bee species native to Asia as important study organism for invasive pollinators. Thereby, we highlight the value of participatory study designs in invasion biology and explore the role of beekeepers in currently running citizen science approaches.
Exploring the Potential Risk of Heavy Metal Pollution of Edible Cultivated Plants in Urban Gardening Contexts Using a Citizen Science Approach in the Project “Heavy Metal City-Zen”
Urban gardening has become increasingly popular, creating green oases in cities; however, many of these activities are undertaken in areas of high traffic density or on ex-brown field sites. As a consequence, there are still some barriers to the adoption of these urban gardening practices for food production. One of the public concerns is the transfer of urban pollutants such as heavy metals into the consumer’s food chain, however, city-wide data is often difficult and expensive to collect. In the citizen science project described herein, we conducted simple citizen-led common collaborative experiments in urban community gardens. These data provided information on the potential risk of heavy metal contaminants and ways in which to mitigate those risks in an urban gardening context. Generally, values were below guideline thresholds, however, at a few garden sites, soil trace metal concentrations (Pb, Cd, Zn) exceeded Austrian recommended limits. Moreover, only at two sites were plant trace metal concentrations shown to be above European food standards limits. Given the citizen’s positive response to the project, we suggest expanding this study to the whole of Vienna, giving newly established gardens a chance to predetermine the risks posed by their local soils.
Citizen science (cs) has manifold potential in generating new knowledge, raising awareness and enabling learning, as numerous studies have shown in recent years. The Stockholm Environment Institute published a discussion brief already in 2017 on how cs could contribute to the SDGs, where the potential for cs was identified in contributing to the definition of new targets and metrics, in monitoring progress and in implementing the SDGs. Fritz et al. identified gaps in traditional data sources for monitoring and implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and showed the potential of cs to fill these gaps. Consequently, Fraisl et al. showed in a systematic review that cs is already contributing to five indicators and could contribute to 76 more indicators. In this Special Issue a wide range of papers, including research articles, reviews and commentaries, explore from different perspectives how citizen science can contribute to the achievement of the SDGs at local, regional and international levels.
In this extended abstract we investigate if the diversity represented in the Citizen Science Network Austria is also reflected in the participants of the Austrian Citizen Science Conference, the main annual event of the Citizen Science Network Austria. The results indicate that the diversity has increased since 2015. However, some groups are still only a minority at the conference.
The Sculptured Resin Bee (Megachile sculpturalis) is the first ever recorded invasive wild bee species in Europe. To track its colonization history and investigate the degree of connectivity between populations across the European invasion axis, population genetic analyses were performed including specimens collected in the framework of a citizen science project. Distinctive genetic clusters were detected with east-west differentiations in Central Europe. The results support the hypothesis that the cluster formation resulted from multiple, independent introductions of the species to the European continent.
In this chapter, we address the perennial question of what is citizen science? by asking the related question, why is it challenging to define citizen science? Over the past decade and a half, we have seen the emergence of typologies, definitions, and criteria for qualifying citizen science. Yet, citizen science as a field seems somewhat resistant to obeying a limited set of definitions and instead attracts discussions about what type of activities and practices should be included in it. We explore how citizen science has been defined differently, depending on the context. We do that from a particularly European perspective, where the variety of national and subnational structures has also led to a diversity of practices. Based on this background, we track trade-offs linked to the prioritisation of these different objectives and aims of citizen science. Understanding these differences and their origin is important for practitioners and policymakers. We pay attention to the need for definitions and criteria for specific contexts and how people in different roles can approach the issue of what is included in a specific interpretation of citizen science.
Adequate infrastructure for citizen science is constantly growing and has become increasingly important in providing support to citizen science activities, both nationally and internationally. Many types of citizen science infrastructures exist, with different functionalities. This chapter focuses on current citizen science platforms. The platforms addressed in this chapter are those which display citizen science data and information, provide good practical examples and toolkits, collect relevant scientific outcomes, and are accessible to different stakeholders, ranging from interested citizens to scientific institutions to authorities, politicians, and public media. We present current citizen science platforms in Europe and associated (inter)national citizen science networks and discuss how these platforms have become increasingly vital within citizen science. Based on these examples, we elaborate on challenges for citizen science platforms, such as establishing and financing platforms, designing user interfaces, maintaining platforms, promoting the usage of platforms, etc. We conclude with an outlook into potential development needs of citizen science platforms in the future.
Citizen science is a promising field for educational practices and research. However, it is also highly heterogeneous, and learning happens in diverse ways, according to project tasks and participants’ activities. Therefore, we adopt a sociocultural view of learning, in which understanding learning requires a close analysis of the situation created both by the project tasks and the dynamics of engagement of the participants (volunteers, scientists, and others). To tackle the complexity of the field, this chapter maps learning in citizen science into six territories, according to where learning might take place: formal education (schools and universities); out-of-school education (science and nature clubs, summer camps, outdoor education, etc.); local and global communities (neighbourhood associations, activist associations, online communities, etc.); families; museums (science museums, art museums, zoos, and botanic gardens); and online citizen science. For each territory, we present key findings from the literature. The chapter also introduces our six personal journeys into the field of learning and citizen science, displaying their variety and the common lessons, challenges, and opportunities. Finally, we present four key tensions arising from citizen science projects in educational settings and look at training different stakeholders as a strategy to overcome some of these tensions.
