Using citizen science to address conservation issues related to climate change and coastal systems

The growing need for scientific knowledge to underpin conservation and policy actions offers the potential to engage citizen scientists in studies related to coastal ecosystems and climate change. Citizen science is particularly useful for a number of key reasons. First, our knowledge of marine ecosystems lags behind that of terrestrial ecosystems and so citizen science offers the opportunity to gather much-needed data. Second, citizen science lends itself well to the broad spatial scales and long periods of time that data is typically required to study the influence of climate change, in marine as well as terrestrial systems. A Avenue of research that lends itself well to citizen science in coastal environments is climate change mitigation, specifically the carbon storage properties of ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrass beds. Citizen scientists joining the project receive a thorough program of lectures and onsite training by the project leaders including an introduction to the field of biodiversity research.