'Citizen Science'

There are various definitions of citizen science and this is because there are many projects using citizen science and in different ways. Generally, citizen science occurs when members of the public co-produce knowledge to support 'professional' scientists with their research. Citizen science is becoming popular in the natural and environmental disciplines, where volunteers collect data in order to characterise and understand changes over time.

Although environmental citizen science and the co-production of knowledge is not a new phenomenon, evolving technology and communications provides a timely and low-cost solution to mass data collection, whilst offering various social benefits, including environmental education and community empowerment. It is acknowledged that community-based monitoring presents various opportunities as well as challenges but without this data, very little information would be available. Local involvement supports contemporary policies and frameworks, inducing the Catchment-Based Approach (CaBA), which are encouraging local stakeholders to establish ownership on a catchment scale.

 "Science-society-policy interactions for evidence-informed decision making" (SOCIENTIZE Consortium, 2013)