Animal Counting Toolkit : a practical guide to small-boat surveys for estimating abundance of coastal marine mammals

The authors thank Synchronicity Earth, Marisla Foundation, and the US Marine Mammal Commission for seed funding for this program.Small cetaceans (dolphins and porpoises) face serious anthropogenic threats in coastal habitats. These include bycatch in fisheries; exposure to noise, plastic and chemical pollution; disturbance from boaters; and climate change. Generating reliable abundance estimates is essential to assess sustainability of bycatch in fishing gear or any other form of anthropogenic removals and to design conservation and recovery plans for endangered species. Cetacean abundance estimates are lacking from many coastal waters of many developing countries. Lack of funding and training opportunities makes it difficult to fill in data gaps. Even if international funding were found for surveys in developing countries, building local capacity would be necessary to sustain efforts over time to detect trends and monitor biodiversity loss. Large-scale, shipboard surveys can cost tens of thousands of US dollars each day. We focus on methods to generate preliminary abundance estimates from low-cost, small-boat surveys that embrace a ‘training-while-doing’ approach to fill in data gaps while simultaneously building regional capacity for data collection. Our toolkit offers practical guidance on simple design and field data collection protocols that work with small boats and small budgets, but expect analysis to involve collaboration with a quantitative ecologist or statistician. Our audience includes independent scientists, government conservation agencies, NGOs and indigenous coastal communities, with a primary focus on fisheries bycatch. We apply our Animal Counting Toolkit to a small-boat survey in Canada’s Pacific coastal waters to illustrate the key steps in collecting line transect survey data used to estimate and monitor marine mammal abundance.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Smartphone Icon User Interface Design for Non-literate Trackers and Its Implications for an Inclusive Citizen Science

In 1996 we developed an Icon User Interface design for handheld computers that enabled non-literate trackers to enter complex data. When employed in large numbers over extended periods of time, trackers can gather large quantities of complex, rich biodiversity data that cannot be gathered in any other way. One significant result in the Congo was that data collected by trackers made it possible to alert health authorities to outbreaks of Ebola in wild animal populations, weeks before they posed a risk to humans. Trackers can also play a critical role in preventing the decimation of large mammal fauna due to poaching. Collectively, the seven case studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate the richness and complexity of scientific data contributed by community-based citizen science. Furthermore, trackers can also make novel contributions to science, demonstrated by scientific papers co-authored by trackers. This may have far-reaching implications for the development of an inclusive citizen science. Community-based tracking can significantly contribute to large-scale, long-term monitoring of biodiversity on a worldwide basis. However, community-based citizen science in developing countries will require international support to be sustainable

CyberFabrics_v1.pdf

Abstract<br><br>Citizen science benefits society by involving the general public in scientific research to help solve problems. However, existing software and data are ad-hoc, disjointed, non-interoperable, non-standardized, and isolated – resulting in citizen science software and data siloes. This project will develop an integrated cyber-infrastructure to transform the current scenario of isolated data and software into a sustainable network of interoperable systems. Such integration and interoperability will improve the discovery, appraisal, collection, exploration, visualization, analysis, reanalysis, use, and reuse of citizen science software and data across multiple disciplines and scales to solve diverse human and ecological challenges.<br

SI2-SSI: CitSci.org - Advancing and Mobilizing Citizen Science Data through an Integrated Sustainable Cyber-Infrastructure

<u>CitSci.org is a citizen science platform that advances the impacts and outcomes of field-based projects. We allow projects to create their own projects in a do-it-yourself approach. Projects can define what they wish to measure, document how they measure it, and build custom datasheets for real-time data entry online and via mobile applications. This saves projects the costs and hassles associated with creating their own front-end and back-end systems and custom mobile apps. CitSci.org provides an integrated suite of volunteer management capabilities plus data exploration and visualization tools for people to create their own visualizations of trends, relationships, and comparisons. Tools exist for communications, alerts, uploading data, and custom downloads. In contrast to most systems, we support structured observations – rigorous protocols for observing natural phenomena that follow experimental designs enabling statistically significant scientific comparisons. We facilitate cross-project sharing of protocols, measurement, data, and ideas for meta-analyses and interoperability.<br></u