Contributions to conservation outcomes by natural history museum-led citizen science: Examining evidence and next steps

Ballard, Heidi L.; Robinson, Lucy D.; Young, Alison N.; Pauly, Gregory B.; Higgins, Lila; Johnson, Rebecca F.; Tweddle, John C.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.08.040

Cited by 125 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Up-to-date records of species distribution are critical for understanding the effects of these forces on individual species and communities (Shaffer et al, 1998;Ponder et al, 2001;Thuiller, 2004;Chen et al, 2011). Considering the potential effects of rapid urbanization on species distributions, the capability of citizen science for sampling urban areas is also promising (McCaffrey, 2005;Cooper et al, 2007;Paulos et al, 2008;Ballard et al, 2017). Standard methods for sampling biodiversity are often extremely challenging to implement in urban and suburban areas because of the high proportion of private property that professional biologists cannot easily access.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, in addition to generating biodiversity data, citizen-science projects in urban regions can also have important educational and societal benefits. For example, effectively managed citizen-science projects can convince participants that documenting the nature in their own neighborhoods is valid and important (Ballard et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Citizen science provides a potential solution to all of these logistical difficulties by incorporating the recruitment of volunteers from across study areas and allowing residents to learn the importance of the wildlife in their own neighborhoods. These benefits of citizen science are especially apparent in urban areas, where large, dense, and diverse populations make volunteer recruitment easier (McCaffrey, 2005;Cooper et al, 2007;Dickinson et al, 2010;Ballard et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas

2017

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Museum collections are critical to contemporary biological research, but museum acquisitions have declined in recent decades, hampering researchers' ability to use collections to assess species responses to habitat modification, urbanization, and global climate change. Citizen science may be a key method to bolster museum collections data, particularly from urban regions, where ongoing data collection is critical to our understanding of ecosystem dynamics in a highly modified and variable landscape. In this study, we compare data collected as part of the citizen-science project Reptiles and Amphibians of Southern California (RASCals), hosted on the platform iNaturalist (www.inaturalist.org), to data in the VertNet database (www.vertnet.org), which houses millions of museum collection records from over 250 natural-history collections, for four focal species, including a native lizard of conservation concern that has declined with urbanization, a native lizard that is widespread in urban areas, and two invasive aquatic species. We compared numbers of VertNet records over time to modern RASCals records, and the number of records collected from urban, suburban, and protected areas from both databases. For all species, citizen-science records were generated much more rapidly than museum records. For three of our four focal species, RASCals participants over 27 months documented from 70 to 750% more records than were added to the VertNet database after 1990. For the urban-tolerant southern alligator lizard, RASCals participants collected nearly 45 times more modern urban records than are contained in the VertNet database. For all other species, the majority of RASCals records were collected within suburban or other highly modified landscapes, demonstrating the value of citizen science for collecting data within urban and suburban ecosystems. As new museum acquisitions decline, citizen-science projects like RASCals may become critical to the maintenance of modern species-distribution data.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas

2017

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“…The benefits for the public include acquiring new skills and knowledge, hands-on understanding of scientific processes, and a sense of achievement and pleasure in individual contribution to science (Brossard et al 2005;Raddick et al 2009). Citizen science also can impact society as a whole, raise awareness and involvement in social and environmental issues, influence policy makers and legislation, and change public attitudes and behavior toward science in general and in specific scientific fields (Ballard et al 2017;Forrester et al 2017;Overdevest et al 2004). …”

Section: Contributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Vision and Reality: A Study of Scientists’ Views on Citizen Science

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Baram‐Tsabari

et al. 2017

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“…Citizen science projects increasingly serve education and outreach goals in addition to scientific inquiry (Ballard et al 2017a;Domroese and Johnson 2017;McKinley et al 2017). Although most often applied to research projects, citizen science can be employed by museums to teach the public about the importance of museum collections while simultaneously giving them the ability to make direct contributions to those collections (Ballard et al 2017b). Citizen science programs can also be incorporated into formal education curricula.…”

Section: Informal Education: Citizen Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Arctic science education using public museum collections from the University of Alaska Museum: an evolving and expanding landscape

et al. 2017

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Alaska faces unique challenges in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, including limited accessibility to resources and learning opportunities, and a lack of place-based education resources. Museum education programs, traditionally focused on public outreach through docent-led tours, are playing an increasingly important role in both formal and informal aspects of STEM education to help address these challenges. The University of Alaska Museum (UAM) stands as a model in the Arctic region exemplifying how public natural history museum collections can be utilized to create active place-based learning experiences with the aim of increasing engagement in STEM literacy and building connections between museums and communities. These efforts take many forms, including the development of teaching materials involving physical objects and (or) online data from the open-access database ARCTOS, training preservice teachers, and implementing citizen science projects. Because many UAM specimens and objects are from Alaska, they are easily incorporated into place-based education, thereby demonstrating how the Arctic environment is unique at local and regional scales. Here, we showcase several programs that are either unique to UAM or part of larger national projects and include exemplar teaching modules in order to provide learning opportunities in the Arctic region and other rural settings.Key words : specimen-based science, STEM education, place-based education, citizen science, University of Alaska Museum.Résumé : L'Alaska est confronté à des défis exceptionnels en matière d'éducation en science, technologie, ingénierie et mathématiques (STIM), et parmi ces défis il y a l'accessibilité limitée aux ressources et aux possibilités d'apprentissage et un manque de ressources en éducation selon une approche locale. Les programmes éducatifs de musée, traditionnellement axés sur la sensibilisation du public au moyen de tours guidés, jouent un rôle de plus en plus important sur le plan tant formel qu'informel de l'enseignement de la STIM,

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Contributions to conservation outcomes by natural history museum-led citizen science: Examining evidence and next steps

Cited by 125 publications

References 39 publications

Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas

Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas

Between Vision and Reality: A Study of Scientists’ Views on Citizen Science

Arctic science education using public museum collections from the University of Alaska Museum: an evolving and expanding landscape

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