Eyes on the aliens: citizen science contributes to research, policy and management of biological invasions in Europe
Invasive alien species (IAS) are a key driver of global biodiversity loss. Reducing their spread and impact is a target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG target 15.8) and of the EU IAS Regulation 1143/2014. The use of citizen science offers various benefits to alien species (AS) decision making and to society, since public participation in research and management boosts awareness, engagement and scientific literacy and can reduce conflict in IAS management. We report the results of a survey on AS citizen science initiatives within the framework of European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action Alien-CSI. We gathered metadata on 103 initiatives across 41 countries, excluding general biodiversity reporting portals, spanning from 2005 to 2020, offering the most comprehensive account of AS citizen science initiatives on the continent to date. As 75% of the initiatives specifically collected data on IAS of Union Concern, citizen science in Europe is of high policy relevance.Strikingly, only about one third of the projects shared their data to open data repositories such as the Global Biodiversity Information facility or the European Alien Species Information Network. Moreover, many did not adhere to the principles of FAIR data management. Based on this dataset, we offer suggestions to strengthen the network of IAS citizen science projects and to foster knowledge exchange among citizens, scientists, managers, policy-makers, local authorities, and other stakeholders.
PRICE-JONES Veronica;
BROWN Peter;
ADRIAENS Tim;
TRICARICO Elena;
FARROW Rachel;
DE JESUS CARDOSO Ana;
GERVASINI Eugenio;
GROOM Quentin;
REYSERHOVE Lien;
SCHADE Sven;
TSINARAKI Chrysi;
MARCHANTE Elizabete;
2022-11-14
PENSOFT PUBLISHERS
JRC128439
1619-0033 (online),
https://neobiota.pensoft.net/article/81476/list/9/,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC128439,
10.3897/neobiota.78.81476 (online),
Additional supporting files
| File name | Description | File type | |
|---|
