Citizen Scientist Engagement in Mammal Monitoring through Mammalweb

OVERVIEW

Increasingly, the threats to biodiversity operate over large spatial scales. To understand these threats and to manage their impacts, it is essential that we monitor biodiversity over correspondingly large scales. For some taxa, such as birds and butterflies, this already occurs thanks to the efforts of large numbers of volunteers who record abundance of their taxa of interest using standardised protocols. Mammals are of similar interest to the public but, relative to these other taxa, have been monitored poorly. This is problematic because of the ecological, economic and cultural significance of many mammal species. The relatively poor monitoring of mammals is largely attributable to their low detectability: many species are nocturnal, elusive, or rare.

Camera traps can be deployed for long periods to photograph passing wildlife and offer significant potential to enhance the monitoring of mammals but use for widespread monitoring brings significant hurdles. These include the logistical difficulties of deploying and servicing cameras over large spatial scales, and the burden of classifying many thousands of images per year. This suggests that the recruitment and retention of volunteer “citizen scientists” may be of fundamental importance to a successful programme of mammal monitoring with camera traps. The pressing need for volunteer amateur naturalists (citizen scientists) to participate in data collection for biodiversity monitoring programmes in Europe has long been recognised.

MammalWeb was designed by Durham University in collaboration with Durham Wildlife Trust to involve citizen scientists in mammal monitoring with camera traps (www.mammalweb.org). Volunteers deploy camera traps and upload the resultant images and associated meta-data, and/or classify the growing bank of images to yield ‘consensus classifications’ of the image content. The data provide information about the distribution, activity and ecological associations of wild mammals in the area, and have been fed into local and national databases (e.g. Environmental Records Information Centre North East; National Biodiversity Network).

MammalWeb has had considerable success at a local level but important challenges remain as the platform and approach is rolled out more widely. One particular issue centres on volunteer engagement, especially in the context of achieving sufficient image classifications. Here there is a need to examine motivations of citizen scientists, building on previous work to understand the features that facilitate recruitment, retention and motivations of volunteer participants in biodiversity monitoring to ensure their long-term engagement. A second challenge relates to making the most of the data in order to drive end-user engagement. Here, we need to ensure that the data are available for use by a broad spectrum of people (students, teachers, scientists, NGOs, government agencies, land managers, and policy makers) since feedback from these communities helps identify development priorities.

This project will tackle both of those challenges, focusing on understanding and increasing volunteer engagement and the value of the data generated by the MammalWeb project. The most fundamental contribution will thus be to ensure volunteer involvement at all 3 levels of engagement: citizens as sensors; citizens as basic data interpreters; and involvement in problem definition and analysis. Through enhancing citizen scientist engagement with ecological data the project has the opportunity to make a profound difference to mammal monitoring in the UK.

Specific aims:
(1) To build on an established network of camera traps by engaging participants to deploy traps and submit data according to a rigorous protocol.
(2) To experiment with feedback for users on a random basis, estimating the effect of different modes of feedback on engagement.
(3) To develop different forms of data presentation based on interrogation of the underlying data base, and to trial these, assessing their impact on user engagement.
(4) To build on existing links with governmental and non-governmental end-users to determine their relevant policy needs and potential for engagement;
(5) To determine the policy value of an indicator of mammal abundance derived from camera trap data.

METHODOLOGY

The student will work with a large existing network of camera traps and will liaise with project members and partners to extend that network and to enhance member engagement through results dissemination. You will develop feedback approaches that can be trialled through the platform itself and also using social media, email and more traditional methods of communication. Different users will be randomly allocated to displays that visualise data in different ways, and the impacts on engagement will be estimated. The effectiveness of different methods will also be evaluated through engagement with citizen scientists. The student will draw on comparable schemes for monitoring other taxa and will assess the reach and impact of the information that they provide.