“Citizen Science: Engaging with change in the marine environment” workshop report now available.
Large amounts of data about the marine environment are gathered by volunteers in the UK each year, while scientists and statutory bodies need current, accurate information to inform policy decisions – but how well does ‘citizen science’ meet the needs of the policy makers, and do we have the technology to enable the efficient flow of high quality data?
With funding from the Defra/NBN contract and the UK Environmental Observation Framework, the Marine Biological Association held a workshop to explore these questions in February at the Linnean Society in London.
Participants included representatives from the GB Non Native Species Secretariat, Environment Agency, Countryside Council for Wales, NBN Trust, Marine Conservation Society, iSpot, BTO and the Biological Records Centre.
The workshop examined existing citizen science initiatives from the policy makers’ perspective and discussed how they might be adapted to answer key scientific questions. Discussions were held on data quality, data flow and data archiving, and how these can be supported and enhanced by web-based resources.
Clear recommendations arose from the discussions:
1. Greater integration and communication within the marine volunteer recording community.
2. The marine community should look towards cross-sector working with the non-marine community.
3. Regular meetings / workshops should take place to establish and maintain channels of communication between volunteer recorders, volunteer scheme / project managers and policy makers.
A report on the workshop is now available to download from the MBA website
A further report dealing specifically with marine citizen science data flow, in particular the recommended interoperation of existing web-based resources for the capture, verification and dissemination of marine biodiversity data, will be available shortly.