Can Volunteers Collect Data that are Comparable to Professional Scientists? A Study of Variables Used in Monitoring the Outcomes of Ecosystem Rehabilitation

Having volunteers collect data can be a cost-effective strategy to complement or replace those collected by scientists. The quality of these data is essential where field-collected data are used to monitor progress against predetermined standards because they provide decision makers with confidence that choices they make will not cause more harm than good. The integrity of volunteer-collected data is often doubted. In this study, we made estimates of seven vegetation attributes and a composite measure of six of those seven, to simulate benchmark values. These attributes are routinely recorded as part of rehabilitation projects in Australia and elsewhere in the world. The degree of agreement in data collected by volunteers was compared with those recorded by professional scientists. Combined results showed that scientists collected data that was in closer agreement with benchmarks than those of volunteers, but when data collected by individuals were analyzed, some volunteers collected data that were in similar or closer agreement, than scientists. Both groups’ estimates were in closer agreement for particular attributes than others, suggesting that some attributes are more difficult to estimate than others, or that some are more subjective than others. There are a number of ways in which higher degrees of agreement could be achieved and introducing these will no doubt result in better, more effective programs, to monitor rehabilitation activities. Alternatively, less subjective measures should be sought when developing monitoring protocols. Quality assurance should be part of developing monitoring methods and explicitly budgeted for in project planning to prevent misleading declarations of rehabilitation success.     

Sense and Influence: Environmental Monitoring Tools and the Power of Citizen Science

Automated monitoring devices are useful technologies for communities seeking to document and solve environmental problems. However, without deeper scrutiny of their design and deployment, there is a risk that they will fail to have the impact that many of their promoters intend. We develop a rubric for analysing how different kinds of monitoring devices help environmental advocates influence public debates. We apply this rubric in a study of environmental organizations in Pennsylvania that are choosing between recruiting volunteer citizen scientists and using automated sensor-based devices to gather water quality data in streams threatened by hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. Many organizations rely on volunteers using simple monitoring tools because they are affordable and produce easily managed data sets. An argument for this method of monitoring is that volunteering in the field also fosters citizen engagement in environmental debates. By comparison, we find the increased use of automated devices tends to reinforce hierarchies of expertise and constrains the agendas of nonprofessionals who participate in monitoring projects. We argue that these findings suggest that automated technologies, however effective they may be in gathering data on environmental quality, are not well designed to support broad public participation in environmental science and politics.     

Trust in Citizen Science Research: A Case Study of the Groundwater Education Through Water Evaluation & Testing Program1

Thornton, Teresa and Jessica Leahy, 2012. Trust in Citizen Science Research: A Case Study of the Groundwater Education Through Water Evaluation & Testing Program. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 48(5): 1032‐1040. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2012.00670.x Abstract: Data collected by citizen scientists, including K‐12 students, have been validated by the scientific community through quality assurance/quality control tests and publication of results in peer‐reviewed journal articles. However, if citizen science data are to be used by local communities, research is needed to determine which factors contribute to local community member trust in citizen science data, and how to increase the benefits and use of citizen science programs. This article describes the Groundwater Education Through Water Evaluation & Testing (GET WET!) program that employs middle and high school students, state and local government employees, environmental nongovernmental organization leaders, business representatives, college faculty and students, and other volunteers as citizen scientists to create a database of groundwater quality for use as a baseline for local water resources management. Data were gathered through semi‐structured interviews pre‐ and post‐involvement from 40 participants in this citizen science program conducted in five states in the northeastern United States. Results indicate that factors of trust are largely based on interpersonal trust and familiarity. We conclude with recommendations and future research that may improve local community member willingness to trust citizen science data generated by students.     

Science and Decision Making: Water Management and Tree‐Ring Data in the Western United States1

Abstract: Growing populations, limited resources, and sustained drought are placing increased pressure on already over‐allocated water supplies in the western United States, prompting some water managers to seek out and utilize new forms of climate data in their planning efforts. One source of information that is now being considered by water resource management is extended hydrologic records from tree‐ring data. Scientists with the Western Water Assessment (WWA) have been providing reconstructions of streamflow (i.e., paleoclimate data) to water managers in Colorado and other western states (Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming), and presenting technical workshops explaining the applications of tree‐ring data for water management for the past eight years. Little is known, however, about what has resulted from these engagements between scientists and water managers. Using in‐depth interviews and a survey questionnaire, we attempt to address this lack of information by examining the outcomes of the interactions between WWA scientists and western water managers to better understand how paleoclimate data has been translated to water resource management. This assessment includes an analysis of what prompts water managers to seek out tree‐ring data, how paleoclimate data are utilized by water managers in both quantitative and qualitative ways, and how tree‐ring data are interpreted in the context of organization mandates and histories. We situate this study within a framework that examines the coproduction of science and policy, where scientists and resource managers collectively define and examine research and planning needs, the activities of which are embedded within wider social and political contexts. These findings have broader applications for understanding science‐policy interactions related to climate and climate change in resource management, and point to the potential benefits of reflexive interactions of scientists and decision makers.     

Volunteer Macroinvertebrate Monitoring: Tensions Among Group Goals,Data Quality,and Outcomes

Volunteer monitoring of natural resources is promoted for its ability to increase public awareness, to provide valuable knowledge, and to encourage policy change that promotes ecosystem health. We used the case of volunteer macroinvertebrate monitoring (VMM) in streams to investigate whether the quality of data collected is correlated with data use and organizers' perception of whether they have achieved these outcomes. We examined the relation between site and group characteristics, data quality, data use, and perceived outcomes (education, social capital, and policy change). We found that group size and the degree to which citizen groups perform tasks on their own (rather than aided by professionals) positively correlated with the quality of data collected. Group size and number of years monitoring positively influenced whether a group used their data. While one might expect that groups committed to collecting good-quality data would be more likely to use it, there was no relation between data quality and data use, and no relation between data quality and perceived outcomes. More data use was, however, correlated with a group's feeling of connection to a network of engaged citizens and professionals. While VMM may hold promise for bringing citizens and scientists together to work on joint conservation agendas, our data illustrate that data quality does not correlate with a volunteer group's desire to use their data to promote regulatory change. Therefore, we encourage scientists and citizens alike to recognize this potential disconnect and strive to be explicit about the role of data in conservation efforts.     

HYDROLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING AND SOCIETAL ACTION1

ABSTRACT: Hydrology is both an applied practical science and a pure geophysical science. The goal of hydrology, as a geophysical science, is to achieve theories capable of explaining with satisfactory accuracy the phenomena of interest. Through the rapidly accelerating power and versatility of digital computing technology, theory development and application are immensely facilitated via increasingly sophisticated predictive modeling schemes, which are now the principal operating tools both for applied management hydrology and for basic geophysical hydrology. While this approach treats phenomena as classes or generalizations, social and behavioral scientists have long argued that human beings base their actions on percepts, i.e., on the concrete specifics of their experience. Thus, the commonly held ideal of basing policy, decisions, and public actions on the best possible science encounters a conflict in belief systems. A possible resolution of this dilemma lies in the use of observational components, which in concept-centered science serve as data to test or calibrate models. These components also serve as a great repository of natural experience that is closely attuned to the perceptual reality that propels societal action. Landscapes and sediments provide indices of real processes, whose occurrence can be expected by continuity to extend to present and future activity. More attention to research on such indices is warranted as a means of triggering perception-based action by responsible decision-makers. Grounded in reality, and tempered by their intrinsic fallibility, the scientifically powerful conceptual schemes (models) will then serve as guides to further action. The full societal benefit of hydrological science requires a balanced approach in which subdisciplines focused on environmental indices are afforded equal attention to those focused on conceptual idealization.     

Natural History Traits Associated with Detecting Mortality Within Residential Bird Communities: Can Citizen Science Provide Insights?

Cat predation of birds in residential landscapes is ephemeral, unpredictable, and spatially dispersed, and thus requires many person-hours to observe. We sought to identify whether specific behaviors, traits, or feeding ecologies of birds contribute to their probability of cat-caused mortality around residences across temperate North America. In addressing this question, we evaluated citizen science data with respect to peer-reviewed species accounts (Birds of North America, BNA). Using information on cat predation from the BNA, we found that species that glean their prey from the ground or breed in nest boxes were three times more likely to be depredated by cats, while birds that hawk were over two times less likely to become cat prey than would be predicted by random chance. Data from citizen science sources also showed that birds using nest boxes had increased susceptibility to cat predation, as did those that use feeders and that glean from foliage. We caution that observations of predation by citizen science volunteers may be biased towards detection at feeders. Future research should focus on developing volunteer survey techniques for improving estimates of bird mortality rates and sources.     

Beyond water data: benefits to volunteers and to local water from a citizen science program

Survey results of citizen science water data collection volunteers are presented, indicating personal benefits (e.g., being in nature, helping local water quality), and suggesting potential long-term benefits of improved watershed health (e.g., behavior change). These results can inform citizen science program development and contribute to watershed planners’ understanding of the broad benefits of such programs. We suggest that respondents’ positive feelings toward the watershed's major river and desire to learn about science and nature are place-specific elements that watershed and citizen science program managers could utilize in program development. Moreover, we explore the potential of social diffusion and behavior change and suggest the need for further research in these areas. We conclude that citizen science has potential not just as a means to collect large amounts of data (cheaply), but as a means to engage citizens to make environmentally friendly decisions.     

Backgrounds of students of behavior in relation to their attitude toward animal well-being

Knowledge of the backgrounds of students of behaviour working in the field of applied animal behavior science may help us to recognize their influence on conclusions reached in a particular study and on more general points of view. This recognition may result in a speed up of the progress in this science, to the benefit of science and animals. Some types are: (1) Eco-ethologists (ethologists of the hunters-type). They like to stalk healthy wild animals in their natural environment. They are less interested in the abnormal behavior of domestic animals under husbandry circumstances. (2) Behaviorists. These are psychologists that still think in a man-animal dichotomy. They are not interested in animals for their own sake but as models for human behavior. (3) Behavior physiologists. These biologists are not primarily interested in behavior. Because of the type of experiments they perform they have an aversity against animal protectionists. (4) Ethologists of the farmers type. These ethologists want to posses animals, collect animal species, take care of them and breed them. They are able to speak on approximately the same wavelength as farmers as well as animal protectionists. (5) Zootechnicians of the farmers type. These scientists want to make a living out of animals and like to take care for them. They are also able to speak at approximately the same wavelength as farmers and animal protectionists.     

Communicating climate science: The role of perceived communicator’s motives

In two experimental studies, we investigated the effects of public perceptions of climate scientists’ communicative motives on trust in scientists and willingness to engage with climate science messages. Study 1 demonstrated that members of the public who were led to believe that scientists aim to inform about the consequences of climate change (rather than to persuade to take a particular course of action) reported higher trust in scientists and stronger willingness to engage in environmental behaviour. Study 2 revealed that this effect was moderated by the style of the scientific message that participants were exposed to. Participants who expected scientists to engage in persuasion were more receptive to persuasive rather than informative messages, while the opposite was true for participants who believed that scientists’ purpose was purely to inform. In both studies the effects of perceived motives on willingness to act in line with the climate change messages were mediated through trust in scientists. The data demonstrate that managing public expectations about the purposes of science communication and delivering messages that are consistent with these expectations are a key to successful communication of climate science.     

Assumptions of the Deficit Model Type of Thinking: Ignorance, Attitudes, and Science Communication in the Debate on Genetic Engineering in Agriculture

This paper spells out and discusses four assumptions of the deficit model type of thinking. The assumptions are: First, the public is ignorant of science. Second, the public has negative attitudes towards (specific instances of) science and technology. Third, ignorance is at the root of these negative attitudes. Fourth, the public’s knowledge deficit can be remedied by one-way science communication from scientists to citizens. It is argued that there is nothing wrong with ignorance-based explanations per se. Ignorance accounts at least partially for many cases of opposition to specific instances of science and technology. Furthermore, more attention needs to be paid to the issue of relevance. In regard to the evaluation of a scientific experiment, a technology, or a product, the question is not only “who knows best?,” but also “what knowledge is relevant and to what extent?.” Examples are drawn primarily from the debate on genetic engineering in agriculture.     

Evaluation by policy makers of a procedure to describe perceived landscape openness

In the last decade policy makers have increasingly recognized the need to include people's perceptions in methods for describing landscape quality. At the same time, a third wave of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has become available that make it technically possible to model landscape quality in a realistic manner. However, as there is often a mismatch between science and policy, it remains unclear to what extent perception-based models developed by scientists can be useful to policy makers. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness to policy making of a GIS-based procedure for describing perceived landscape openness. To this end, a workshop was organized which was attended by eight Dutch policy makers who acted as representatives of their province (region). The Group Decision Room (GDR) technique was used to elicit the policy makers' evaluations of the procedure in an anonymous and reliable manner. The procedure was presented to the policy makers using cases from their own province, which they assessed using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that policy makers rated the procedure as being highly relevant to policy making, scientifically credible, usable by policy makers and feasible to implement in the policy making process. They especially appreciated the flexibility and transparency of the procedure. The policy makers concluded that the procedure would be of most value for monitoring landscape changes and for analysing impacts on landscape openness in land use scenario studies. However, they requested guidelines for proper implementation of the various options in the procedure. In general, the current study shows that explicit and transparent evaluation of the usefulness of GIS-based tools can aid integration at the science-policy interface and help to ensure that both scientists and policy makers are informed of interrelated options and requirements.     

Communicating About Bioenergy Sustainability

Defining and measuring sustainability of bioenergy systems are difficult because the systems are complex, the science is in early stages of development, and there is a need to generalize what are inherently context-specific enterprises. These challenges, and the fact that decisions are being made now, create a need for improved communications among scientists as well as between scientists and decision makers. In order for scientists to provide information that is useful to decision makers, they need to come to an agreement on how to measure and report potential risks and benefits of diverse energy alternatives in a way that allows decision makers to compare options. Scientists also need to develop approaches that contribute information about problems and opportunities relevant to policy and decision making. The need for clear communication is especially important at this time when there is a plethora of scientific papers and reports and it is difficult for the public or decision makers to assess the merits of each analysis. We propose three communication guidelines for scientists whose work can contribute to decision making: (1) relationships between the question and the analytical approach should be clearly defined and make common sense; (2) the information should be presented in a manner that non-scientists can understand; and (3) the implications of methods, assumptions, and limitations should be clear. The scientists’ job is to analyze information to build a better understanding of environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic aspects of the sustainability of energy alternatives. The scientific process requires transparency, debate, review, and collaboration across disciplines and time. This paper serves as an introduction to the papers in the special issue on “Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems: Cradle to Grave” because scientific communication is essential to developing more sustainable energy systems. Together these four papers provide a framework under which the effects of bioenergy can be assessed and compared to other energy alternatives to foster sustainability.     

Technology and science: innovation at the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology

While science advances technology, it is also true that technology advances science. Thus, the two bodies of knowledge are increasingly recognized as interdependent. Nonetheless, recent advances in information communication technology (ICT), in particular, may have profound implications for the norms by which science is conducted. For example, treatment of data will increasingly be in terms of probability distributions, rather than as point estimates, because the cost of computation is now so low that more robust approaches to treatment of uncertainty are within the grasp of normal science. Perhaps more importantly, the techniques by which scientists collaborate, communicate, and curate science are undergoing a rare period of rapid change. The papers in this special section exemplify the evolution of the relationship between technology and science in these two important ways: (1) treatment of data uncertainties and (2) participation in novel methods of publication and review. The latter was fostered by the 2016 meeting of the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies (ISSST), at which all of the papers in this special section were presented. This editorial summarizes some of the trends in ICT that are the subject of experimentation in ISSST and introduces the idea that scientific societies in the information age are more likely to take the form of a network than they are likely to look like the societies of the last several centuries.     

Diversity in Current Ecological Thinking: Implications for Environmental Management

Current ecological thinking emphasizes that systems are complex, dynamic, and unpredictable across space and time. What is the diversity in interpretation of these ideas among today’s ecologists, and what does this mean for environmental management? This study used a Policy Delphi survey of ecologists to explore their perspectives on a number of current topics in ecology. The results showed general concurrence with nonequilibrium views. There was agreement that disturbance is a widespread, normal feature of ecosystems with historically contingent responses. The importance of recognizing multiple levels of organization and the role of functional diversity in environmental change were also widely acknowledged. Views differed regarding the predictability of successional development, whether “patchiness” is a useful concept, and the benefits of shifting the focus from species to ecosystem processes. Because of their centrality to environmental management, these different views warrant special attention from both managers and ecologists. Such divergence is particularly problematic given widespread concerns regarding the poor linkages between science (here, ecology) and environmental policy and management, which have been attributed to scientific uncertainty and a lack of consensus among scientists, both jeopardizing the transfer of science into management. Several suggestions to help managers deal with these differences are provided, especially the need to interpret broader theory in the context of place-based assessments. The uncertainty created by these differences requires a proactive approach to environmental management, including clearly identifying environmental objectives, careful experimental design, and effective monitoring.     

The Role of Science in Public Policy: Higher Reason,or Reason for Hire?

The traditional vision of the role science should play in policy making is of a two stage process of scientists first finding out the facts, and then policy makers making a decision about what to do about them. We argue that this two stage process is a fiction and that a distinction must be drawn between pure science and science in the service of public policy. When science is transferred into the policy realm, its claims to truth get undermined because we must abandon the open-ended nature of scientific inquiry. When we move from the sphere of science to the sphere of policy, we pick an arbitrary point in the open-ended scientific process, and ask our experts to give us the answer. The choice of the endpoint, however, must always be arbitrary and determined by non-scientific factors. Thus, the two stages in the model of first finding the facts, and then making a decision about what to do, cannot be clearly separated. The second stage clearly affects the first. This conclusion will have implications about existing scientific policy institutions. For example, we advocate that the environmental assessment process be radically overhauled, or perhaps even let go. It will be our position that ultimately a better model for the involvement of scientists in public policy debates is that of being participants in particular interest groups (“hired guns”), rather than as supposedly unbiased consultants to decision-makers.     

COOPERATIVE MODELING: BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THE PUBLIC1

As freshwater resources become more scarce and water management becomes more contentious, new planning approaches are essential to maintain ecologic, economic, and social stability. One technique involves cooperative modeling in which scientists and stakeholders work together to develop a computer simulation model to assist in planning efforts. In the Middle Rio Grande region of New Mexico, where water management is hotly debated, a stakeholder team used a system dynamics approach to create a computer simulation model to facilitate producing a regional plan. While the model itself continues to be valuable, the process for creating the model was also valuable in helping stakeholders jointly develop understanding of and approaches to addressing complex issues. In this paper, the authors document results from post‐project interviews designed to identify strengths and weaknesses of cooperative modeling; to determine if and how the model facilitated the planning process; and to solicit advice for others considering model aided planning. Modeling team members revealed that cooperative modeling did facilitate water planning. Interviewees suggested that other groups try to reach consensus on a guiding vision or philosophy for their project and recognize that cooperative modeling is time intensive. The authors also note that using cooperative modeling as a tool to build bridges between science and the public requires consistent communication about both the process and the product.