The Role of Citizen Science in Landscape and Seascape Approaches to Integrating Conservation and Development

Abstract

Initiatives to manage landscapes for both biodiversity protection and sustainable development commonly employ participatory methods to exploit the knowledge of citizens. We review five examples of citizen groups engaging with landscape scale conservation initiatives to contribute their knowledge, collect data for monitoring programs, study systems to detect patterns, and test hypotheses on aspects of landscape dynamics. Three are from landscape interventions that deliberately target biodiversity conservation and aim to have sustainable development as a collateral outcome. The other two are driven primarily by concerns for agricultural sustainability with biodiversity conservation as a collateral outcome. All five include programs in which, management agencies support data collection by citizen groups to monitor landscape changes. Situations where citizen groups self-organise to collect data and interpret data to aid in landscape scale decision making are OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 1201 less common and are restricted to landscapes where the inhabitants have a high level of scientific literacy. Given the complexity of landscape processes and the multiple decision makers who influence landscape outcomes we argue that citizen science broadly defined should be an essential element of landscape scale initiatives. Conservation managers should create space for citizen engagement in science and should empower citizen groups to experiment, learn, and adapt their decision-making to improve landscape scale outcomes.

Science Embedded in Local Forest Landscape Management Improves Benefit Flows to Society

“…Multiple scholars are concerned that the present movement to hand over forest management to communities without ensuring that appropriate governance arrangements and science-based management regimes are in place could lead to the depletion of forest biodiversity (Laurance et al, 2011;Langston et al, 2017;Terborgh and Peres, 2017). "Local science" in its various forms is an important contributor to solving highly specific, context dependent problems (Danielsen et al, 2005;Sayer et al, 2015;Sutherland et al, 2015;Dawson et al, 2017). Local and indigenous knowledge should complement and be inter-woven (Tengö et al, 2017) with academic science, fostering transdisciplinary understanding of complex social and ecological contexts.…”

Governance Challenges in an Eastern Indonesian Forest Landscape

“…In addition, previous research and development projects could provide useful contextual data that is otherwise unattainable [36,39,61,62]. If motivated by the KPH, multiple actors can contribute to the knowledge inventory through citizen science [63] and information exchange, including local NGOs, water management groups, government institutions, and farmer cooperatives. The inventory can also contribute to stakeholder discussions and should be used transparently to make trade-offs explicit during decision-making processes.…”

Will Biodiversity Be Conserved in Locally-Managed Forests?

“…In situations with well-educated and prosperous people, citizen science emerges and people often self-organise to support biodiversity conservation efforts-often in areas under local management [38,39]. Consortia of conservation organisations, governments, and industry can collaborate to conserve biodiversity in areas under local management [40].…”

“…Locally-managed areas may act as buffers around protected areas or may provide corridors linking natural areas. Locally-managed areas may provide better biodiversity benefits if they are located adjacent to refuge areas [38,41].…”