Mair, Louise and Ruete, Alejandro
(2016).
Explaining Spatial Variation in the Recording Effort of Citizen Science Data across Multiple Taxa.
PloS one. 11
:1
, 1-13
[Journal article]
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- Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. 1MB |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147796
Abstract
The collation of citizen science data in open-access biodiversity databases makes temporally and spatially extensive species’ observation data available to a wide range of users. Such data are an invaluable resource but contain inherent limitations, such as sampling bias in favour of recorder distribution, lack of survey effort assessment, and lack of coverage of the distribution of all organisms. Any technical assessment, monitoring program or scientific research applying citizen science data should therefore include an evaluation of the uncertainty of its results. We use ‘ignorance’ scores, i.e. spatially explicit indices of sampling bias across a study region, to further understand spatial patterns of observation behaviour for 13 reference taxonomic groups. The data is based on voluntary observations made in Sweden between 2000 and 2014. We compared the effect of six geographical variables (elevation, steepness, population density, log population density, road density and footpath density) on the ignorance scores of each group. We found substantial variation among taxonomic groups in the relative importance of different geographic variables for explaining ignorance scores. In general, road access and logged population density were consistently important variables explaining bias in sampling effort, indicating that access at a landscape-scale facilitates voluntary reporting by citizen scientists. Also, small increases in population density can produce a substantial reduction in ignorance score. However the between-taxa variation in the importance of geographic variables for explaining ignorance scores demonstrated that different taxa suffer from different spatial biases. We suggest that conservationists and researchers should use ignorance scores to acknowledge uncertainty in their analyses and conclusions, because they may simultaneously include many correlated variables that are difficult to disentangle.
Authors/Creators: | Mair, Louise and Ruete, Alejandro | ||||||
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Title: | Explaining Spatial Variation in the Recording Effort of Citizen Science Data across Multiple Taxa | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | PloS one | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2016 | ||||||
Volume: | 11 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Page range: | 1-13 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 13 | ||||||
Publisher: | Public Library of Science | ||||||
ISSN: | 1932-6203 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Journal article | ||||||
Refereed: | Yes | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 106 Biological Sciences (Medical to be 3 and Agricultural to be 4) > Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (methods development to be 10203) (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 106 Biological Sciences (Medical to be 3 and Agricultural to be 4) > Ecology | ||||||
Agrovoc terms: | citizen participation, sampling, biodiversity | ||||||
Keywords: | citizen science data, biodiversity, temporal observations, spatial observations, sampling bias, ignorance scores | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-e-4100 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-e-4100 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
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ID Code: | 14224 | ||||||
Faculty: | NJ - Fakulteten för naturresurser och jordbruksvetenskap | ||||||
Department: | (NL, NJ) > Swedish Species Information Centre (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Ecology (S) > Dept. of Ecology | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 11 Apr 2017 07:22 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 09 Sep 2020 14:17 |
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