Title
Conservation birding: A quantitative conceptual framework for prioritizing citizen science observations
Author(s)
Callaghan, Corey T.;Watson, James E.M.;Lyons, Mitchell B.;Cornwell, William K.;Fuller, Richard A.
Published
2021
Publisher
Biological Conservation
Abstract
Despite impressive growth in global biodiversity data, knowledge about the occurrence of species in many parts of the world remains incomplete because of major gaps in the underlying data. This can lead to ill-informed conservation decisions. The collective effort of citizen scientists can generate a great deal of data quickly, but how might we prioritize the powerful - but finite - effort? We argue that instead of simply filling empty spots on the map based solely on where biodiversity information is incomplete, near-term threats to the integrity or persistence of biodiversity assemblages could also be incorporated to prioritize citizen science sampling. Here we develop a quantitative framework illustrating how citizen science sampling and initiatives can be prioritized when simultaneously considering both the completeness of biodiversity sampling and the risk of habitat conversion. We illustrate this framework for birds using global citizen science data from the eBird platform and a global model of the risk of habitat conversion. We find that regions in Africa and southeast Asia would rank as the highest priorities for new and expanded citizen science initiatives. Our framework provides a mechanism to quantify where new biodiversity data are most urgently needed, ultimately helping to improve environmental decision-making. We anticipate this framework can be used in the future at a suite of relevant planning scales, ranging from local to regional to global.
Keywords
Biodiversity data;Big data;Citizen science;Community science;Spatial and temporal gaps;Biodiversity sampling;Species richness

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