The Citizen Science Opportunity for Researchers and Agencies

Citizen science is the generation of new information and knowledge from the participation of nonscientists in traditional scientific activities. In its best case, it is a collaborative endeavor with benefits for the participants, scientists, and society as a whole. Citizen science is not new: Nonmeteorologists have been gathering weather data for centuries, and amateur ornithologists have recorded data for nearly as long (Crain et al. 2014). However, with the advent of low-cost information and communication technologies, there are new possibilities to expand participation in data gathering, exchange, and analysis to other fields of environmental science. A number of questions remain about the balance of costs and benefits of including such participation in ongoing research or monitoring programs. The engagement and training of community members in citizen science programs have been shown to provide a number of benefits to the proponents: researchers, monitoring agencies, and policymakers (Diduck and Sinclair 2002). These include the direct and indirect effects of more-informed and empowered communities and increased support for land-use and resource decisionmaking processes by governments, companies, and institutions (Haywood and Besley 2014). Recent citizen science projects on hydrology, aquatic biodiversity, and water quality have shown that productive partnerships among scientists, agencies, and the public can provide an increase in the spatial and temporal resolution of environmental information (e.g., Buytaert et al. 2015).