TY - JOUR
T1 - The eBird enterprise
T2 - An integrated approach to development and application of citizen science
AU - Sullivan, Brian L.
AU - Aycrigg, Jocelyn L.
AU - Barry, Jessie H.
AU - Bonney, Rick E.
AU - Bruns, Nicholas
AU - Cooper, Caren B.
AU - Damoulas, Theo
AU - Dhondt, André A.
AU - Dietterich, Tom
AU - Farnsworth, Andrew
AU - Fink, Daniel
AU - Fitzpatrick, John W.
AU - Fredericks, Thomas
AU - Gerbracht, Jeff
AU - Gomes, Carla
AU - Hochachka, Wesley M.
AU - Iliff, Marshall J.
AU - Lagoze, Carl
AU - La Sorte, Frank A.
AU - Merrifield, Matthew
AU - Morris, Will
AU - Phillips, Tina B.
AU - Reynolds, Mark
AU - Rodewald, Amanda D.
AU - Rosenberg, Kenneth V.
AU - Trautmann, Nancy M.
AU - Wiggins, Andrea
AU - Winkler, David W.
AU - Wong, Weng Keen
AU - Wood, Christopher L.
AU - Yu, Jun
AU - Kelling, Steve
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the thousands of eBird participants around the world who serve as the engine for the eBird enterprise, and the hundreds of regional editors who volunteer their time to review incoming data. We thank our international partners. We thank Tim Lenz, Kevin Webb, and Tim Levatich for their technical work on the project. Multiple facets of this work have been supported by the following National Science Foundation awards: NSF-ISE:0087760, NSF-ITR:46456, BIO-BDI:49605, CISE-SEI+II:50913, NSF-EHR:53811, BIO-RAPID:62570, NSF-CDI TYPE II:64083, NSF IIS:1017793, NSF IIS-1125098, DEB: 110008, DEB:100009, and CISE-SOCS:66281. We thank the Wolf Creek Charitable Foundation and the Leon Levy Foundation for continued support. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our supporters.
PY - 2014/1
Y1 - 2014/1
N2 - Citizen-science projects engage volunteers to gather or process data to address scientific questions. But citizen-science projects vary in their ability to contribute usefully for science, conservation, or public policy. eBird has evolved from a basic citizen-science project into a collective enterprise, taking a novel approach to citizen science by developing cooperative partnerships among experts in a wide range of fields: population and distributions, conservation biologists, quantitative ecologists, statisticians, computer scientists, GIS and informatics specialists, application developers, and data administrators. The goal is to increase data quantity through participant recruitment and engagement, but also to quantify and control for data quality issues such as observer variability, imperfect detection of species, and both spatial and temporal bias in data collection. Advances at the interface among ecology, statistics, and computer science allow us to create new species distribution models that provide accurate estimates across broad spatial and temporal scales with extremely detailed resolution. eBird data are openly available and used by a broad spectrum of students, teachers, scientists, NGOs, government agencies, land managers, and policy makers. Feedback from this broad data use community helps identify development priorities. As a result, eBird has become a major source of biodiversity data, increasing our knowledge of the dynamics of species distributions, and having a direct impact on the conservation of birds and their habitats.
AB - Citizen-science projects engage volunteers to gather or process data to address scientific questions. But citizen-science projects vary in their ability to contribute usefully for science, conservation, or public policy. eBird has evolved from a basic citizen-science project into a collective enterprise, taking a novel approach to citizen science by developing cooperative partnerships among experts in a wide range of fields: population and distributions, conservation biologists, quantitative ecologists, statisticians, computer scientists, GIS and informatics specialists, application developers, and data administrators. The goal is to increase data quantity through participant recruitment and engagement, but also to quantify and control for data quality issues such as observer variability, imperfect detection of species, and both spatial and temporal bias in data collection. Advances at the interface among ecology, statistics, and computer science allow us to create new species distribution models that provide accurate estimates across broad spatial and temporal scales with extremely detailed resolution. eBird data are openly available and used by a broad spectrum of students, teachers, scientists, NGOs, government agencies, land managers, and policy makers. Feedback from this broad data use community helps identify development priorities. As a result, eBird has become a major source of biodiversity data, increasing our knowledge of the dynamics of species distributions, and having a direct impact on the conservation of birds and their habitats.
KW - Citizen-science
KW - EBird
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84888224221&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84888224221&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.003
DO - 10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.003
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84888224221
SN - 0006-3207
VL - 169
SP - 31
EP - 40
JO - Biological Conservation
JF - Biological Conservation
ER -