Aleksey Polevoy, PhD, Leading Researcher, Laboratory of Landscape Ecology and Forest Ecosystem Protection, Forest Research Institute KarRC RAS
Citizen science is about doing scientific research with active involvement of a large number of amateur volunteers of most diverse professional backgrounds unrelated to science. Participating in various studies, volunteers effectively provide additional resources for data collection, processing, and analysis, thereby contributing to the advancement of science. On the one hand, volunteers engage in a pursuit to which they can dedicate their energy and time, while scientists, on the other hand, gain enormous support from hundreds and thousands of unsalaried assistants who are genuinely passionate about scientific research, even if not trained.
Citizen science today is developing along several lines. One of them is biodiversity monitoring. Volunteers help scientists study populations, monitor rare species, protect ecosystems, and so on.
Andrey Humala, PhD, Leading Researcher, Laboratory of Landscape Ecology and Forest Ecosystem Protection, Forest Research Institute KarRC RAS
— Judging by the geography of the participating volunteers, the leaders, in terms of numbers, are the USA and Canada, while Russia is so far in the fourth position, although its potential, including territory-wise, is huge, — remarked Andrey Humala.
The lecturers – Leading Researchers of the Laboratory of Landscape Ecology and Forest Ecosystem Protection at the Forest Research Institute KarRC RAS, Candidates of Biological Sciences Aleksey Polevoy and Andrey Humala – talked about the tools for engaging all interested individuals in entomological or other field research. The example they used was the iNaturalist platform, which facilitates active participation in biodiversity monitoring. The audience was introduced to the capabilities of iNaturalist, and the main techniques for working with the platform.
The not-for-profit social network iNaturalist, founded in 2008, is a meeting point for scientists and volunteers, where biodiversity observations from around the world can be mapped and shared.
In 2017, automatic species identification was enabled on the iNaturalist platform, as images are recognized by a neural network based on available databases. The website and mobile app feature automated species identification from photographs and audio recordings. The primary purpose is to identify species of plants, animals, and fungi in the submitted photographs using the database.
Andrey Humala spoke about how volunteer participation in scientific research began and how quickly it has evolved into a large-scale phenomenon of great help for the scientific community.
— In 2019, there were 25 million records; in 2021 – 75 million; a year ago – 282 million; and this year, as of June 20, the number of records reached 360 million, — noted Andrey Humala in his talk.
Andrey Humala also analyzed the volunteers’ preferences for study. Observers pay the most attention to plants, followed by insects, then birds, fungi, arachnids, reptiles, mammals, mosses, lichens, and so on.
Varvara Markova, Leading Specialist at the Educational Centre – Museum of Applied Environmental Research of the KarRC RAS, informed that the Centre offers a certain number of lectures on various topics every year. The topics are chosen based on scientific discoveries, recent publications, or requests from the audience.
- The topic of citizen science came up during the project “Arctic Nature in the Paanajärvi National Park” implemented by the North-Centre Association and the NP, with the Karelian Research Centre RAS as a project partner. Within this project, scientific data will be updated, an inventory of rare flora and fauna of the Paanajärvi will be conducted, experts will study the effects of climate change on the northward expansion of invasive species, and capacities will be built for further nature monitoring, including a geographic information portal, a spatial model of the park, and research infrastructure.
Among other things, the project involves creating an iNaturalist-based sub-platform. Volunteers will be invited to photograph natural features and wildlife in the park and upload the images to the app to be recognized, identified and counted.
-- The scientists’ task is to communicate with people, explaining how they can contribute to the project, -- added Varvara Markova.
Varvara Markova, Leading Specialist of the Museum of Applied Environmental Research KarRC RAS
It should be noted that citizen science has many directions and volunteers can engage in various fields beyond entomology, such as health and medical research, archaeological and historical projects, or distributed computing, where volunteers' computers are used to process scientific data.
The Karelian Research Centre RAS has since long and actively been involving volunteers in collaborative work. For instance, volunteers participate in studies done by the KarRC RAS Biomedical Research Center by donating blood for a scientific effort intended to help predict, through blood work, the risks of developing cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in people who currently believe they are absolutely healthy.
The Institute of Applied Mathematical Research KarRC RAS makes extensive use of volunteer computing. Indeed, many problems cannot be solved without computer simulation, which requires modern computing systems – increasingly complex and decentralised. Interestingly, the computations can be performed by joining together ordinary home computers of volunteers from around the world, connected via the Internet. This process is called volunteer computing: thousands of people contribute their computing power to address a common task, thereby helping scientists.
