Citizen science is rapidly becoming an invaluable tool in conservation. With technology providing new and interactive ways for anyone to contribute to conservation work from anywhere in the world, and on their own schedule, more conservationists than ever are turning to mobile apps and crowdsourced data analysis to speed up their projects and strengthen their data.
Similarly, more affordable and accessible tools like Audiomoth have opened the door for people to get involved in massive data collection efforts like the Silent Cities project, giving a glimpse into how our wider understanding of nature and conservation could be transformed as technology becomes increasingly user-friendly.
This group is your place for all things related to citizen science. Whether you're looking to get involved in a new conservation tech project, you're thinking of launching your own citizen science-powered project, you'd like to discuss capacity building and how citizen science can empower local communities, or you want to share a great resource or project you've found, this group will help you connect with others who are excited about making conservation tech accessible and effective!
To learn more about citizen science, check out this 2020 WILDLABS feature on Zooniverse projects.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
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My name is Ann Wambui ,a conservationist working as a conservation officer at Mugie Conservancy. Am a Diploma holder specialized in Wildlife Management from the Wildlife Research Training Institute. Currently, am Distance Learning student at the Africa Nazarene University.
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Remote Sensing Scientist
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A systems and policy specialist, currently working as the Quality & Accreditation Manager for Ceres Tag.
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BearID Project
Conservation biologist using camera traps to develop automated methods of photoID
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Coordinator of the citizen science project Bird Sounds Global (BSG). Its aim is to produce training and testing material for machine learning induced automated bird species recognition.
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A budding wildlife researcher focusing on giraffe.
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WILDLABS
I'm the Community Manager at WILDLABS
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Junior machine learning engineer with a background in data science and physics
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Article
A new web portal for annotating bird sounds has been opened called Bird Sounds Global (BSG). It is part of project LIFEPLAN, and its key objective is to develop global, automated software for bird sound identification.
10 June 2022
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Michael and Maria Parsons recently purchased a substantial 165 acre lot of land in Far North Queensland, Australia. Entirely covered by tropical rainforest, it is contiguous with the Daintree World Heritage Area and...
11 May 2022
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In this thought piece from Whale Seeker, Malcolm Kennedy considers the strengths of weaknesses of citizen science and AI, both used to analyze large amounts of conservation data, and discusses the importance of data...
19 August 2021
The latest Technology Quarterly special issue from The Economist highlights the theme of protecting biodiversity, and covers topics including climate change's impacts on biodiversity, modelling ecosystems, using...
17 June 2021
WILDLABS member Meredith Palmer shared this great course module based around Snapshot Serengeti camera trap data, and developed for university biology courses. This material is ideal for introductory level biology...
25 November 2020
Creating bold conservation tech solutions requires each of us to find the intersection between our skills and passions. In this case study on the new Aqualink reef monitoring system, a unique citizen science project...
9 June 2020
A couple months ago, we introduced you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), a non-invasive way to build an identification algorithm from both wild and captive animals by photographing footprints. Today, we'...
3 June 2020
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We're excited to welcome the WildTrack FIT group to our community! Today, we'd like to introduce you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT) and share how you can incorporate this tracking method into your field...
6 May 2020
Funding
Want to compete in the iWildCam 2020 competition identifying species in camera trap images to support biodiversity monitoring efforts and automatic species classification model improvements? Because the Workshop on Fine...
4 May 2020
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's MARS ocean observatory may someday make conducting deep-sea research more accessible and affordable thanks to Deep-Sea Connect, their new wireless system engineered to ...
31 March 2020
Trapped inside during the COVID-19 quarantine and looking to engage with conservation science without leaving your desk? Citizen science projects like those on Zooniverse offer a great opportunity to impact scientific...
18 March 2020
The Esri Conservation Program is now accepting applications for grant assistance to access its ArcGIS Solutions for Protected Area Management Application. This system provides access to a suite of both mobile and web...
4 March 2020
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Hi Natalia!Great examples of mobile devices and web apps for global citizen science projects have been shared by others. For a bit of context, eBird is the citizen science... |
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Citizen Science | 14 hours 14 minutes ago | |
Some folks doing work in this space - Wildlife Drones, Conservation Drones, UAV Wild, AfricanDrones, Oceans Unmanned, Geonadir. |
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Drones, AI for Conservation, Citizen Science, eDNA & Genomics, Emerging Tech | 2 weeks 1 day ago | |
G'day Wildlabs champions, Are you interested in the intersections of technology design, citizen science, and artificial intelligence? Much of the biodiversity data used... |
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Citizen Science | 9 months 2 weeks ago | |
If you're traveling with kids, consider https://www.ecoexplore.net. They can earn points and badges for their observations of plants, animals, insects, and fungi, and can... |
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Citizen Science | 11 months ago | |
Hi Zoe, This looks really interesting! Is the initiative on social media at all? I would like to share it with the Australian Citizen Science Association membership. Also, is... |
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Citizen Science | 11 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hi all, Members of the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA) are running our next citizen science conference virtually Oct 27th-29th (AEST). All are welcome and... |
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Citizen Science | 11 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hi Paul, I would be interested to see how your project turned out if there is a link to it anywhere? Also, in case it's of interest, UNEP and TED Ed developed the... |
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Citizen Science | 11 months 2 weeks ago | |
I'll be there - there are several technology sessions that are planned for it... Muki |
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Citizen Science | 3 years 4 months ago | |
The Citizen Science Group at the DLR-Institute of Data Science in Jena, Germany is looking... |
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Citizen Science | 3 years 9 months ago | |
Illegal logging erodes biodiversity, exacerbates climate change, and bankrolls political corruption. Law enforcement officers, corporations, and consumers require new tools to... |
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Citizen Science | 4 years 3 months ago | |
Applications are invited for one PhD studentship as part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project named ECSAnVis (Extreme Citizen Science: Analysis &... |
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Citizen Science | 4 years 8 months ago | |
@Sivakumar This thread seems interesting |
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Citizen Science | 5 years 3 months ago |
Using social media for Citizen Science projects - examples
21 June 2022 at 02:40pm
22 June 2022 at 07:14am
Hey Natalia,
In addition to what Carly has listed, there's also BirdLasser- You can check it out :)
3 July 2022 at 03:54pm
Hi Natalia!
Great examples of mobile devices and web apps for global citizen science projects have been shared by others. For a bit of context, eBird is the citizen science application used most globally for birds, and it's through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, where the Macaulay Library is hosted. At least when I worked at the Cornell Lab, Merlin ID was an application that specifically supports people with learning to identify birds by sight and sound, but not a citizen science app, as no data was submitted. Perhaps that has changed since I returned to Australia, but not to my knowledge. I believe, however, that eBird and broader datasets were used to train the AI that underpins the Merlin ID application. Also, note that there are MANY regional bird apps around the world, and many of them have different focuses and features, so consider the reach of your project. iNaturalist is for any species that can be photographed, but there are a lot of bird observations there as well.
Beyond projects involving the submission of outdoor observations, you could also explore Zooniverse for projects currently running that relate to or involve birds. This platform engages members of the public to make sense of media (e.g. text, photos, audio, video) online. Much of that tagged data is often then used to train AI for ecological and broader research investigations. Zooniverse has its own social media, but it's not very active. However, several projects hosted on the platform have their own pages and are quite active.
More broadly still, other projects like Aurorasaurus scrap aurora observations from social media, too. I am not aware of any bird projects that do this, personally. Nevertheless, I share this example, just to highlight a bit of diversity as to how social media is used in citizen science.
You might also enjoy scanning through the very active social media accounts of the Australian Citizen Science Association (e.g. via Twitter). You could also check for bird projects via SciStarter (and their associated social media), noting projects in Scistarter are largely from the US, as well as Australia given an API between our project finders.
Just for context, I am a tech design researcher, with a professional background in ecology and environmental education as well. In relation to HCI, I publish at venues like CHI and DIS exploring how to design enticing technologies that support ecologists and the public alike to make sense of the calls of Australia's endangered Eastern bristlebirds in ways that are meaningful and useful (e.g. THIS and THIS). Hope this helps! If you have questions, sing out via Twitter or here!
Best regards,
Jessie
Bird Sounds Global web portal
10 June 2022 at 02:03pm
11 June 2022 at 01:41pm
11 June 2022 at 06:10pm
Cofounder needed
9 June 2022 at 04:23pm
17 June 2022 at 01:14pm
What about developing a drone conservation training course for field conservation staff teaching specific skills for specific research needs.
17 June 2022 at 06:54pm
How exciting @Joyeeta ! I'd love to learn more about the companies and projects you worked on, can you share more info about them?
I once chatted to an entrepreneurial advisor with a couple of my conservation tech ideas, and he said my ideas are good/impactful but don't make for a product worth millions of $$$ of turnover per year that would interest investors. So I am very curious about how you got your conservation tech businesses off the ground!
18 June 2022 at 08:33pm
Some folks doing work in this space - Wildlife Drones, Conservation Drones, UAV Wild, AfricanDrones, Oceans Unmanned, Geonadir.
UKAN+ Monitoring UK Biodiversity Symposium 15-16th June
31 May 2022 at 02:58pm
Research opportunities in the Daintree World Heritage region of Far North Queensland, Australia
11 May 2022 at 02:31pm
26 May 2022 at 04:51am
31 May 2022 at 01:44pm
CitSci, AI, & Design at the LifeCLEF 2021 Workshop!
16 September 2021 at 07:52am
Widening the Bottleneck: Can Citizen Science Accelerate Conservation?

19 August 2021 at 12:00am
Webinar: Bioacoustics and Engagement

19 July 2021 at 12:00am
Citizen Science Conference in Australia
14 July 2021 at 11:07pm
WILDLABS Featured: The Economist Technology Quarterly

17 June 2021 at 12:00am
Webinar: How can data empower communities in marine management?

26 January 2021 at 12:00am
21 June 2022 at 09:07pm
These are fairly low-hanging fruit options if you will (that I'm sure you know about already) but Xeno-Canto & Macaulay Library are online archives for bird images/sounds (Macaulay is for other animals as well). Plus eBird/Merlin, iNaturalist, etc.
You could also check out Key Conservation, run by @mcromp which is working in this space.
You might also check out the Conservation Tech Directory (we have a citizen science filter) to find some examples (e.g., BirdNet, Silent Cities, Cetalingua, Instant Wild). You could also search by 'mobile-app' (another of the filters), as many of those listed have a citizen science component (e.g., Animal Tracker, FinPrint, See Shell).
FlukeBook as a 'tweet-a-whale' thing, so that would be a good example of integration with social media as well.