Evaluation of Data Generated from Lake Samples Collected by Volunteers

Obrecht, Daniel V.; Milanick, Margaret; Perkins, Bruce D.; Ready, Diana; Jones, John R.

doi:10.1080/07438149809354106

Cited by 27 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, each year, MiCorps staff randomly visit ∼10% of the lakes . This comparability reflects the conclusions of several studies that confirm the reliability of volunteer-collected data when qualityassurance steps are followed for lakes (Obrecht et al 1998, Canfield et al 2002 and streams (Fore et al 2001, Engle and Voshell 2002, Nerbonne and Vondracek 2003.…”

Section: Meeting the Challengessupporting

confidence: 68%

Integrating freshwater science and local management through volunteer monitoring partnerships: the Michigan Clean Water Corps

Latimore¹,

Steen²

2014

Freshwater Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Thousands of local watershed organizations and lake associations are actively involved in protection and management of freshwater systems throughout the USA. These nonprofit organizations may or may not have paid staff and rarely employ trained scientists or natural resource managers. Thus, they face challenges, including lack of access to technical assistance to support their lake and river assessment and management initiatives, and may struggle to convince decision makers of the validity of their efforts. Meanwhile, researchers and managers within academia and agencies are challenged by lack of access to long-term data sets, field sites, funding, and personnel, and sometimes struggle to demonstrate real-world application of research results and to build support for freshwater research and management programs. The Michigan Clean Water Corps (MiCorps) volunteer monitoring program is a partnership-based program involving state and regional organizations and local volunteers that has met the above challenges, resulted in expanded monitoring of lakes and streams in Michigan (USA), and led to synergistic outcomes, such as advancing freshwater science, building public support for research and management, and implementing science-based management and protection projects at the local level.

show abstract

Section: Meeting the Challengessupporting

confidence: 68%

Integrating freshwater science and local management through volunteer monitoring partnerships: the Michigan Clean Water Corps

Latimore¹,

Steen²

2014

Freshwater Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The reliability and usefulness of citizen observations for monitoring terrestrial and marine environments have been analysed in several studies. Obrecht et al (1998) conclude that citizen Secchi depth measurements are nearly identical with the measurements made by professionals. Delaney et al (2008) identified obstacles in citizen monitoring and concluded that, with proper training, citizens can provide reliable aid in collecting knowledge about both native and invasive crabs.…”

Section: Usefulness Of the Data Collectedsupporting

confidence: 55%

Participatory surface algal bloom monitoring in Finland in 2011–2013

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Algal mass occurrences are one of the most distinguishing effects of eutrophication in lakes and the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea. Algal bloom occurrence in water bodies varies greatly in terms of both space and time, even during short periods, which makes reliable monitoring of blooms difficult. In this paper, we explore the possibilities to extend the sensor network both spatially and temporally by applying participatory sensing to surface algal bloom monitoring in Finnish lakes and the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea. Results: Two participatory sensing systems were used to collect visual algae observations by citizens: the mobile phone application Levävahti (Algae Watch) and the collaborative web service Järviwiki (Lake wiki), during the summers of 2011-2013. Citizen observations were compared with the visual observations performed by trained expert observers, and mean correlations between citizen and expert observations were calculated using the bootstrapping method: 0.72, 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.53 0.86]; 0.65, 95% CI [0.35 0.86]; and 0.56, 95% CI [0.29 0.76] for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013.Conclusions: Surface algal bloom monitoring is needed to obtain data on algal bloom frequency and intensity, in particular in lakes where the use of satellite remote sensing has limitations and/or phytoplankton monitoring is infrequent or totally lacking. The correlations between expert and citizen observations suggest that citizen observers can provide additional information to support algal bloom monitoring of inland and coastal waters.

show abstract

“…There is always the question of accuracy of the participants' data. Numerous comparison studies of volunteer vs. professional water resources data suggest that volunteer data are generally comparable to professional data for chemical (Obrecht et al, 1998;Loperfido et al, 2010), physical (Rodrigues and Castro, 2008), and biological (Fore et al, 2001;Vail et al, 2003;Gowan et al, 2007;Stepenuck et al, 2011) monitoring. Notably, in all of these studies, volunteers were trained to carry out the monitoring in which they were engaged.…”

Section: Data Accuracymentioning

confidence: 88%

Growing Pains of Crowdsourced Stream Stage Monitoring Using Mobile Phones: The Development of CrowdHydrology

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Citizen science-based approaches to monitor the natural environment tend to be bimodal in maturity. Older and established programs such as the Audubon's Christmas bird count and Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) have thousands of participants across decades of observations, while less mature citizen science projects have shorter lifespans often focused on local or regional observations with tens or hundreds of participants. For the latter, it can be difficult to transition into a more mature and sustainable citizen science-based research program. This paper focuses on this transition by evaluating CrowdHydrology (ca. 2010), a citizen science project that has transitioned from a regional to national network. It evaluates the data accuracy, citizen participation, and station popularity. The CrowdHydrology network asks citizens to send in text messages of water levels in streams and lakes, which has resulted in 16,294 observations submitted by over 8,000 unique participants at 120 unique locations. Using water level data and participation records from CrowdHydrology, we analyze the expansion and citizen participation from a regional to national citizen science network. We identify barriers to participation and evaluate why some citizen science observation stations are popular while others are not. We explore our chosen contributory program model for CrowdHydrology and the influence this model has had on long-term participation. Results demonstrate a highly variable rate of contributions of citizen scientists. This paper proposes hypotheses on why many of our observations are from one-time participants and why some monitoring stations are more popular than others. Finally, we address the future expansion of the CrowdHydrology network by evaluating successful monitoring locations and growing interest of watershed groups to expand the network of gauges.

show abstract

Evaluation of Data Generated from Lake Samples Collected by Volunteers

Cited by 27 publications

References 8 publications

Integrating freshwater science and local management through volunteer monitoring partnerships: the Michigan Clean Water Corps

Integrating freshwater science and local management through volunteer monitoring partnerships: the Michigan Clean Water Corps

Participatory surface algal bloom monitoring in Finland in 2011–2013

Growing Pains of Crowdsourced Stream Stage Monitoring Using Mobile Phones: The Development of CrowdHydrology

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About