Science as a team sport – The COASST model of citizen science

Background/Question/Methods

Regardless of politics, education, career, economic status, gender, or age, citizens want to engage in projects that can deliver new information and skills, and provide scaled-up patterns, stories, and studies that speak to the environmental change happening around them.  Biodiversity citizen science is growing ~20x faster than the U.S. population, and about 8 times faster than professional biodiversity science, suggesting that many people are eager to participate in science, without necessarily becoming scientists themselves.  Citizen science promises fine grain, broad extent data collected over decadal time scales, with co-benefits including increased scientific literacy and civic engagement.  But is it really science?  Or does citizen science deliver non-standardized, unverifiable data collected episodically by individuals with little-to-no training?  How do you know which projects to trust? 

Results/Conclusions

The Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) is a 16 year old citizen science project currently involving ~800 participants from northern California north to Kotzebue, Alaska and west to the Commander Islands, Russia.  After a single 5-hour training delivered in-community by an expert, volunteers have the knowledge and skill sets to accurately survey a coastal site for beached bird carcasses, which they will be able to identify to species correctly ~85% of the time.  Data are collected monthly, and some volunteers remain with the program for years, contributing hundreds, even thousands, of survey hours.  Data go directly into science, as part of studies as diverse as fishery entanglement, historic native uses of seabirds as food sources, and the impacts of sudden shifts in upwelling; as well as into resource management, as part of decisions on fishing regulations, waterfowl hunting limits, and ESA-listed species management. Like professional science, COASST features a specific sampling design linked to questions of interest, verifiable data, statistical analysis, and peer-reviewed publication.  In addition, COASST features before-and-after testing of volunteer knowledge, independent verification of all deductive data, and recruitment and retention strategies linked to geographic community norms.  As a result, the program is successful at bridging from science to citizens, and back.