Growing Pains of Crowdsourced Stream Stage Monitoring Using Mobile Phones: The Development of CrowdHydrology

Citizen science-based approaches to monitor the natural environment tend to be bimodal in maturity. Older and established programs such as the Audubon’s Christmas bird count and Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) have thousands of participants across decades of observations, while less mature citizen science projects have shorter lifespans often focused on local or regional observations with tens or hundreds of participants. For the latter, it can be difficult to transition into a more mature and sustainable citizen science-based research program. This paper focuses on this transition by evaluating CrowdHydrology (ca. 2010), a citizen science project that has transitioned from a regional to national network. It evaluates the data accuracy, citizen participation, and station popularity. The CrowdHydrology network asks citizens to send in text messages of water levels in streams and lakes, which has resulted in 16,294 observations submitted by over 8,000 unique participants at 120 unique locations. Using water level data and participation records from CrowdHydrology, we analyze the expansion and citizen participation from a regional to national citizen science network. We identify barriers to participation and evaluate why some citizen science observation stations are popular while others are not. We explore our chosen contributory program model for CrowdHydrology and the influence this model has had on long-term participation. Results demonstrate a highly variable rate of contributions of citizen scientists. This paper proposes hypotheses on why many of our observations are from one-time participants and why some monitoring stations are more popular than others. Finally, we address the future expansion of the CrowdHydrology network by evaluating successful monitoring locations and growing interest of watershed groups to expand the network of gauges

Citizen science can improve conservation science, natural resource management, and environmental protection

Citizen science has advanced science for hundreds of years, contributed to many peer-reviewed articles, and informed land management decisions and policies across the United States. Over the last 10 years, citizen science has grown immensely in the United States and many other countries. Here, we show how citizen science is a powerful tool for tackling many of the challenges faced in the field of conservation biology. We describe the two interwoven paths bywhich citizen science can improve conservation efforts, natural resource management, and environmental protection. The first path includes building scientific knowledge, while the other path involves informing policy and encouraging public action. We explore how citizen science is currently used and describe the investments needed to create a citizen science program. We find that: 1. Citizen science already contributes substantially to many domains of science, including conservation, natural resource, and environmental science. Citizen science informs natural resource management, environmental protection, and policymaking and fosters public input and engagement. 2. Many types of projects can benefit fromcitizen science, but one must be careful tomatch the needs for science and public involvement with the right type of citizen science project and the right method of public participation. 3. Citizen science is a rigorous process of scientific discovery, indistinguishable from conventional science apart from the participation of volunteers.When properly designed, carried out, and evaluated, citizen science can provide sound science, efficiently generate high-quality data, and help solve problems

Impacts of Urban Land Use on Macroinvertebrate Communities with Comparison of Samples from Snags and Riffles for Southeastern Wisconsin Streams

Macroinvertebrates were used to assess the impacts of urbanization on stream quality across a gradient of watershed imperviousness in 43 southeastern Wisconsin streams. Decreased Shannon diversity, percent of pollution intolerant Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera individuals, and generic richness resulted as watershed imperviousness increased. Values of the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index increased with watershed imperviousness, indicating that stream quality had declined with increased urbanization. Functional feeding metrics indicated a shift in macroinvertebrate composition from little to highly urbanized sites. Percent composition of collectors and gatherers increased, while percent filterers, scrapers, and shredders decreased with increased watershed imperviousness. This shift in macroinvertebrate taxa also suggested decreased stream quality. At low levels of watershed imperviousness, stream quality assessments were variable. However, for most stream quality metrics, a threshold existed between 10 and 20 percent watershed imperviousness, past which stream quality declines were minimized. Future studies should focus on physical and chemical characteristics of watersheds with less than 10-20 percent watershed imperviousness. If aspects elucidating high stream quality levels of such watersheds can be pinpointed, future development may be planned to ensure high stream quality levels in developing areas. Benthic macroinvertebrate community structure was assessed at both snag ·and riffle habitats in the same 43 southeastern Wisconsin streams across a range of watershed urbanization to determine differences in taxa assemblage and a variety of stream quality metrics. Discriminant analyses indicated that dominant species at riffle and snag habitats differed; Hydropsychid caddisflies (Hydropsyche betteni and Cheumatopsyche spp.) and elmid beetles (Optioservus spp. and Stenernlis spp.) discriminated riffle habitats from snag habitats where isopods (Asellus intermedius) and amphipods (Hyalella azteca and Gammarus pseudolimnaeus) predominated. Results of analysis of covariance indicated snag and riffle habitats differed across a gradient of urbanization for the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index, Shannon diversity index, and percent of pollution intolerant insects, filterers, and shredders at each stream site (p </= 0.10). Specific and generic richness were not significantly different between snags and riffles (p ~ 0.10). Macroinvertebrate communities found in snags suggested decreased stream quality when compared to communities found in riffles at the same sites. Thus, metrics derived from each habitat should not be interchanged when assessing stream quality during biomonitoring. However, metric values derived from snag data may be calibrated according to those obtained from riffle habitat under the same level of environmental degradation to predict stream quality. There were 30.2 fewer percent Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera individuals, 0.58 fewer Shannon index points and 0.29 greater biotic index points at snags than at riffles. Snag communities had 1.5 more percent shredders and 44.2 fewer percent filterers than riffles. With additional study, these calibrated metric values might be used for stream quality analysis in streams without riffles or in which snags were sampled.Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource

Individual- and community-level impacts of volunteer environmental monitoring: a synthesis of peer-reviewed literature

Citizens have long contributed to scientific research about the environment through volunteer environmental monitoring programs. Their participation has also resulted in outcomes for themselves, their communities, and the environment. This research synthesizes 35 peer-reviewed journal articles that reported such outcomes through 2012. This collection of articles was derived from a pool of 436 peer-reviewed journal articles about participatory environmental monitoring. Reported outcomes for participants and communities ranged from increasing personal knowledge and community awareness to changing attitudes and behaviors, building social capital, and ultimately, influencing change in natural resource management and policies. Mixed results were reported in regard to citizen participation in natural resource decision-making processes and in terms of participant knowledge gain. Future research recommendations that address identified knowledge gaps include the following: (1) assessing knowledge beyond the basic content of the subject of monitoring to better address the value of volunteer environmental monitoring as a public participation tool; (2) conducting independent research across programs to enable null or negative outcome reporting, understand commonalities of outcomes across programs, and make linkages between outcomes and program characteristics; (3) carrying out rigorous research that includes data collection and statistical analysis focused on the effectiveness of citizen participation in decision making; (4) assessing the time component of outcome achievement to inform the volunteer monitoring community; and (5) conducting additional research to identify changes in attitudes and behaviors, particularly geared toward minimizing losses in biodiversity and impacts of climate change

Factors Associated with Ongoing Commitment to a Volunteer Stream-Monitoring Program

Volunteers are important contributors to Extension conservation efforts. Volunteer water monitoring is one solution for involving people so they become educated about local ecosystems and acquire data used to detect ecological threats. The study reported here measured relationships among Wisconsin\u27s Stream-Monitoring Program\u27s volunteers\u27 motivations and perceptions of program efficacy, analyzing how these are associated with intention to stay involved as stream monitors. Findings indicate four categories of motivations and three categories of efficacy related to volunteers\u27 perception of the program

An Analysis of Resilience Planning at the Nexus of Food, Energy, Water, and Transportation in Coastal US Cities

Climate change poses increased risks to coastal communities and the interconnected infrastructure they rely on, including food, energy, water, and transportation (FEWT) systems. Most coastal communities in the US are ill-prepared to address these risks, and resilience planning is inconsistently prioritized and not federally mandated. This study examined the resilience plans of 11 coastal US cities to understand 1. How FEWT systems were considered within resilience plans and, 2. How nexus principles or elements critical to a nexus approach were incorporated within resilience plans. A “Nexus Index” was created to examine the incorporation of nexus principles, which included partnerships and collaborations, reference to other plans or reports, discussion of co-benefits, cascading impacts, and inclusion of interdisciplinary or cross-silo principles. These principles were used to score each action within the resilience plans. Results showed that only eight actions (1% of all actions across the 11 plans) focused on the connections among FEWT systems within the resilience plans. The transportation system was associated with the most actions, followed by the energy system, water system, and the food system. While FEWT systems were not consistently included, there was evidence from the Nexus Index that the plans included elements critical to a nexus approach, such as the inclusion of partnerships and reference to co-benefits with the actions they designed to build resilience. The heterogeneity among the systems that each plan emphasized reflects the heterogeneity among the challenges that each city faces. While context-specific differences in resilience plans across cities are expected, some consistency in addressing certain infrastructural needs and their nexus interactions may greatly benefit and improve the implementation of resilience planning