Monitoring the UK’s wild mammals: A new grammar for citizen science engagement and ecology

Anthropogenic activities have imperilled not just global ecosystems, but also the ecosystem services they provide which are crucial for human livelihoods. To understand these changes, there is a need for effective monitoring over large spatial and temporal scales. This thesis will build on two proposed solutions. First, citizen science – defined here as the involvement of non-professionals in scientific enquiry – allows the crowdsourcing of data collection and classification to expand monitoring in ways that are logistically infeasible for ecologists alone. Second, motion-sensing camera traps can reduce the labour needed for monitoring since they can be deployed for long periods and provide continuous, relatively unbiased observations. In this thesis, I describe MammalWeb, a citizen science project in north-east England where I enlisted the aid of the local community in wild mammal monitoring. Motivated by the current unevenness of survey effort and data for mammals in Great Britain, MammalWeb involves citizen scientists in both the collection and classification of camera trap images, a novel combination. This is a multidisciplinary project, and in the following chapters I will begin, in Chapter 2, with a detailed reflection on the organisation of the MammalWeb citizen science project and approaches to evaluating its performance. I observe that the majority of contributions came from a small subset of citizen scientists. In Chapter 3, I develop an economical approach to deriving consensus classifications from the aggregated input of multiple users, which is a crucial part of many citizen science projects. This is followed in Chapter 4 by a case study of a partnership I initiated between MammalWeb and the local Belmont Community School, where we empowered a group of secondary school students to not only aid in collecting data for MammalWeb, but also design and deliver ecological outreach to their community. This is now the template for a wider network of school partnerships we are pursuing. Chapter 5 will examine common concerns around estimating species occupancy from camera trap data, including post-hoc discretisation of observations and effects of missing data. I also develop a resampling method to account for uncertain detections, a common issue when crowdsourcing data classifications. I show that, through resampling, the estimated parameters from occupancy models are robust against high uncertainty in the underlying detections. Lastly, Chapter 6 will discuss how my work on MammalWeb has laid the foundation for a wider citizen science camera trapping network in the United Kingdom and avenues for future work. Importantly, I show that MammalWeb citizen scientists have been empowered to be more than “mobile sensors” and act as independent researchers who have initiated ecological studies elsewhere

Open Science Hardware for Realising Globally Equitable Knowledge Production

Physical hardware underpins research in many disciplines. From computing devices, scientific instrumentation, and biological reagents, to remote sensing satellites, researchers rely on hardware to explore and understand the world. However, research equipment is typically based on closed source (i.e. proprietary) hardware, whose designs are legally restricted, preventing others from studying, building, or modifying them. These restrictions cause several problems such as: lack of reproducibility; duplication of effort; forced obsolescence; and higher costs. Crucially, the inefficiencies of closed source hardware reinforce global inequities. This is because the design and manufacturing of research equipment is often monopolised by producers in the Global North. Restricted access to hardware designs mean that only authorised dealers and technicians are allowed to sell or maintain equipment. These services are often unavailable to, or prohibitively expensive for, researchers belonging to historically marginalised communities outside of the Global North. Building on the success of open source software, open source hardware is defined as any physical artefact whose “design is made publicly available with explicit, legally binding freedoms for anyone to study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design”. Open science hardware is an emerging field of practice which studies and applies the principles of open source hardware to research contexts. In 2021, it was formally recognised as a key component in the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Open science hardware provides many benefits compared to its proprietary counterparts. This can include cost savings of up to 87% (Pearce, 2020) and proportional to how often it is replicated; quicker iteration of designs; and adaptation to local needs in underserved communities. Since the 2010s, open science hardware has been developed and used in diverse domains from environmental monitoring, and lab automation, to microscopy. In addition to academics, open science hardware is commonly built by citizen science communities and adapted for different purposes. Other practitioners of open science hardware include educators, social innovators, or artists. In this talk, we provide an overview of open science hardware and the problems it solves. We also provide successful examples of open science hardware projects that serve to not only do good science, but also address global inequities. The talk also presents the Gathering for Open Science Hardware, an international network working towards the adoption of open source hardware across research lifecycle. &nbsp

Evidence of lasting impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep Gulf of Mexico coral community

A coral community 11 km southwest of the site of the Deepwater Horizon blowout at 1,370 m water depth was discovered 3.5 months after the well was capped on 3 November 2010. Gorgonian corals at the site were partially covered by a brown flocculent material (floc) that contained hydrocarbons fingerprinted to the oil spill. Here we quantify the visible changes to the corals at this site during five visits over 17 months by digitizing images of individual branches of each colony and categorizing their condition. Most of the floc visible in November 2010 was absent from the corals by the third visit in March 2011, and there was a decrease in the median proportions of the colonies showing obvious signs of impact after the first visit. During our second visit in 2010, about six weeks after the first, we documented the onset of hydroid colonization (a sign of coral deterioration) on impacted coral branches that increased over the remainder of the study. Hydroid colonization of impacted portions of coral colonies by the last visit in March 2012 correlated positively with the proportion of the colony covered by floc during the first two visits in late 2010. Similarly, apparent recovery of impacted portions of the coral by March 2012 correlated negatively with the proportion of the coral covered with floc in late 2010. A notable feature of the impact was its patchy nature, both within and among colonies, suggesting that the impacting agent was not homogeneously dispersed during initial contact with the corals. While the median level of obvious visible impact decreased over time, the onset of hydroid colonization and the probability of impacts that were not visually obvious suggest that future visits may reveal additional deterioration in the condition of these normally long-lived corals

Footprint of deepwater horizon blowout impact to deep-water coral communities

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) blowout occurred, releasing more oil than any accidental spill in history. Oil release continued for 87 d and much of the oil and gas remained in, or returned to, the deep sea. A coral community significantly impacted by the spill was discovered in late 2010 at 1,370 m depth. Here we describe the discovery of five previously unknown coral communities near the Macondo wellhead and show that at least two additional coral communities were impacted by the spill. Although the oil-containing flocullent material that was present on corals when the first impacted community was discovered was largely gone, a characteristic patchy covering of hydrozoans on dead portions of the skeleton allowed recognition of impacted colonies at the more recently discovered sites. One of these communities was 6 km south of the Macondowellhead and over 90% of the corals present showed the characteristic signs of recent impact. The other community, 22 km southeast of the wellhead between 1,850 and 1,950 m depth, was more lightly impacted. However, the discovery of this site considerably extends the distance from Macondo and depth range of significant impact to benthic macrofaunal communities. We also show that most known deep-water coral communities in the Gulf of Mexico do not appear to have been acutely impacted by the spill, although two of the newly discovered communities near thewellhead apparently not impacted by the spill have been impacted by deep-sea fishing operations

Impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a deep-water coral community in the Gulf of Mexico

To assess the potential impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on offshore ecosystems, 11 sites hosting deep-water coral communities were examined 3 to 4 mo after the well was capped. Healthy coral communities were observed at all sites \u3e20 km from the Macondo well, including seven sites previously visited in September 2009, where the corals and communities appeared unchanged. However, at one site 11 km southwest of the Macondo well, coral colonies presented widespread signs of stress, including varying degrees of tissue loss, sclerite enlargement, excessmucous production, bleached commensal ophiuroids, and covering by brown flocculent material (floc). On the basis of these criteria the level of impact to individual colonies was ranked from 0 (least impact) to 4 (greatest impact). Of the 43 corals imaged at that site, 46% exhibited evidence of impact onmore than half of the colony,whereas nearly a quarter of all of the corals showed impact to \u3e90% of the colony. Additionally, 53% of these corals\u27 ophiuroid associates displayed abnormal color and/or attachment posture. Analysis of hopanoid petroleumbiomarkers isolated from the floc provides strong evidence that this material contained oil fromtheMacondowell. The presence of recently damaged and deceased corals beneath the path of a previously documented plume emanating from the Macondo well provides compelling evidence that the oil impacted deep-water ecosystems. Our findings underscore the unprecedented nature of the spill in terms of its magnitude, release at depth, and impact to deep-water ecosystems

Standardised Data on Initiatives – STARDIT: Beta Version

There is currently no standardised way to share information across disciplines about initiatives, including felds such as health, environment, basic science, manufacturing, media and international development. All problems, including complex global problems such as air pollution and pandemics require reliable data sharing between disciplines in order to respond efectively. Current reporting methods also lack information about the ways in which diferent people and organisations are involved in initiatives, making it difcult to collate and appraise data about the most efective ways to involve diferent people. The objective of STARDIT (Standardised Data on Initiatives) is to address current limitations and inconsistencies in sharing data about initiatives. The STARDIT system features standardised data reporting about initiatives, including who has been involved, what tasks they did, and any impacts observed. STARDIT was created to help everyone in the world fnd and understand information about collective human actions, which are referred to as ‘initiatives’. STARDIT enables multiple categories of data to be reported in a standardised way across disciplines, facilitating appraisal of initiatives and aiding synthesis of evidence for the most effective ways for people to be involved in initiatives

The Triangle of Sadness - On the need to assess research assessment

In-person 5-minute lightning talk given at the Festival of the Hidden REF on 21 September 2023 at the M Shed in Bristol, United Kingdom. Abstract In this talk, I share some personal reflections - based on my experience, those of others I work with, and from a research culture study - on the need to conduct rigorous assessments of research assessment, and possible challenges when doing that, i.e the "Triangle of Sadness" and "despair gap" with front line workers in research. CRediT contributor roles Pen-Yuan Hsing - Conceptualization; Visualization; Writing (original draft); Writing (review & editing) Jackie Thompson - Conceptualization; Resources Bastian Greshake Tzovaras - Conceptualization; Resources Richard J Acton - Conceptualization; Resources Julien Colomb - Conceptualization; ResourcesThe open source font Metropolis (https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/metropolis) is embedded in the attached presentation slides, which are saved with Microsoft PowerPoint 2021 (version 16.0.14332.20563) in the OOXML Strict format (file extension .pptx). Users of other presentation software might need to install the font in their system before successfully opening and remixing this presentation. PDF files were exported from the PowerPoint presentation, including one with annotated speaker notes