Testing the robustness of Citizen Science projects: Evaluating the results of pilot project COMBER.
BACKGROUND
Citizen Science (CS) as a term implies a great deal of approaches and scopes involving many different fields of science. The number of the relevant projects globally has been increased significantly in the recent years. Large scale ecological questions can be answered only through extended observation networks and CS projects can support this effort. Although the need of such projects is apparent, an important part of scientific community cast doubt on the reliability of CS data sets.


CONCLUSIONS
The pilot CS project COMBER has been created in order to provide evidence to answer the aforementioned question in the coastal marine biodiversity monitoring. The results of the current analysis show that a carefully designed CS project with clear hypotheses, wide participation and data sets validation, can be a valuable tool for the large scale and long term changes in marine biodiversity pattern change and therefore for relevant management and conservation issues.
Institute of Marine Biology Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Center for Marine Recearch (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Giorgos
G
Chatzigeorgiou
Institute of Marine Biology Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Center for Marine Recearch (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece; University of Patras, Department of Biology, Laboratory of Zoology, Rio, Patras, Greece.
Sarah
S
Faulwetter
Institute of Marine Biology Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Center for Marine Recearch (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Thanos
T
Dailianis
The Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom.
Vincent Stuart
VS
Smith
Institute of Marine Biology Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Center for Marine Recearch (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Panagiota
P
Koulouri
Institute of Marine Biology Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Center for Marine Recearch (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Costas
C
Dounas
Institute of Marine Biology Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Center for Marine Recearch (HCMR), Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Christos
C
Arvanitidis
Bio-watch; Coastal biodiversity; representativeness; robustness