Citizen Science - Earthwatch Europe

Citizen Science

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Our citizen science has evolved and changed enormously over the years, branching out to reach a wider audience and advancing data quality and impact. We are proud to be at the forefront of the global movement, developing and sharing best practice for the benefit of people, wildlife and nature.

We believe that citizen science has a crucial role to play in environmental research, providing major benefits

For people

Citizen science provides an opportunity for people from all walks of life to connect with nature and learn about science and the environment. It brings people together and enables them to make a difference by contributing to valuable research and action. It empowers people to join the debate about the future management of the environment and contribute to the change we need.

For science

It can complement and augment standard scientific approaches, for example by collecting data on a different scale or in places that are not normally accessible for scientists. Citizens hold different knowledge, eg. about crucial local context, and the history and impact of environmental issues. Working with citizens opens up new perspectives that can lead to breakthrough insights and solutions.

For agencies

It can help organisations see environmental issues from the ‘frontline’ in a way that might not otherwise be possible. It enables a deeper understanding of the issues among decision-makers and users of natural resources (whether that be business employees, consumers or policy-makers) and provides key evidence and monitoring data that are crucial to improving the management of the natural environment.

For the environment

Citizen science has the power to not only generate the data we need to better understand and look after the natural environment, but also to change hearts and minds. It can inspire people to change their behaviour and to use their voice to advocate for change.    

What is Earthwatch doing?

Advancing best practice and positive impact of citizen science

At Earthwatch we keep pushing the boundaries of citizen science to increase its use and impact. We work closely with the international community and publish our research and tools on open access platforms wherever possible.

Research projects

We lead and contribute to a number of research partnerships, including the MICS project, funded by EU Horizon 2020, which we coordinate, EU-Citizen.Science and COS4CLOUD. Within the UK Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) engaging environments programme, we contributed to both the Opener and Encompass projects and we are a core partner of the national NC4EE project.

International networks

We are an active member of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and a number of our scientists are members of the British Ecological Society (BES) citizen science working group. We participate in the Citizen Science Global Partnership and support the use of freshwater citizen science to monitor and improve progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (indicator 6.3.2 in particular).

We contribute to the EU COST action on Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy and innovation throughout Europe. Our Innovation Lead, Luigi Ceccaroni, chairs the working group on improving data standardisation and interoperability (WG5) and we have been active in the working groups on society-science-policy interface (WG3) and developing synergies with education (WG2). Our work on data interoperability focuses on the development of a recommendation on how to represent data and metadata in citizen science. This work is based on previous efforts by the US Citizen Science Association (CSA)’s International Data and Metadata Working Group to promote collaboration through the development and/or improvement of international standards for citizen science data and metadata. In this respect, Earthwatch also addresses the definition of interoperability standards for data exchange, re-usability and compatibility in citizen science, contributed to define core building blocks of these standards and outlined the way ahead based on the International Data and Metadata Working Group’s previous work.

Using citizen science in our programmes

Citizen science is a key feature of almost all of Earthwatch’s environmental research projects. We believe it is a vital part of our mission to create knowledge and empower people to make positive changes for the environment.

Turbidity test - Upper Kafue by Clement Chiimbwe & Enock Mwangilwa

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Research projects

CROPS
Citizen Science

CROPS

CROPS supports the transition of citizen science from small-scale to a Europe-wide level, moving it towards a modern, open-science approach…. Read more
Citizen Science

CircleUp

CircleUp aims to encourage over 100 households to adopt ‘circular-economy’ buying, using and disposing behaviours, to reduce the amount of… Read more
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MICS

Developing metrics and instruments to evaluate citizen science impacts on the environment and society, as well as science, the economy… Read more

Completed Projects

Citizen Science

Cos4Cloud

Cos4Cloud developed thirteen technological services to improve citizen observatories by helping them to increase the quantity and the quality of… Read more
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Ground Truth 2.0

Ground Truth 2.0 set up and validated a co-design approach to develop six citizen observatories in real conditions, in four… Read more
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