“Approaches to citizen science – an indispensable means of combining ecological research with environmental education and natural history observation – range from community-based monitoring to the use of the internet to “crowd-source” various scientific tasks, from data collection to discovery. With new tools and mechanisms for engaging learners, citizen science pushes the envelope of what ecologists can achieve, both in expanding the potential for spatial ecology research and in supplementing existing, but localized, research programs. The primary impacts of citizen science are seen in biological studies of global climate change, including analyses of phenology, landscape ecology, and macro-ecology, as well as in sub disciplines focused on species (rare and invasive), disease, populations, communities, and ecosystems. Citizen science and the resulting ecological data can be viewed as a public good that is generated through increasingly collaborative tools and resources, while supporting public participation in science and Earth stewardship” (Dickinson et.al, 2012)

“The participation of the general public in the research design, data collection and interpretation process together with scientists is often referred to as citizen science. While citizen science itself has existed since the start of scientific practice, developments in sensing technology, data processing and visualization, and communication of ideas and results, are creating a wide range of new opportunities for public participation in scientific research….

…Although hydrological data collection often involves advanced technology, the advent of robust, cheap, and low-maintenance sensing equipment provides unprecedented opportunities for data collection in a citizen science context. These data have a significant potential to create new hydrological knowledge, especially in relation to the characterization of process heterogeneity, remote regions, and human impacts on the water cycle. However, the nature and quality of data collected in citizen science experiments is potentially very different from those of traditional monitoring networks.

This poses challenges in terms of their processing, interpretation, and use, especially with regard to assimilation of traditional knowledge, the quantification of uncertainties, and their role in decision support. It also requires care in designing citizen science projects such that the generated data complement optimally other available knowledge…” (Buytaert et.al, 2014)

“Societal and technological developments rapidly succeed each other in the 21st century. We know more and more, but desire to know even more and even faster. First of all this means the barrier between experts and laypeople is fading. Second, science budget cuts lead to a need of more economic approaches. A third development is the requirement of societal relevance of studies in order to qualify for grants. A final trend is the rapid development of small, cheap sensors…

…The increasing demand of resources and changes in environment (e.g. climate change) affect the way we do science as well. Citizens are more and more involved in activities in science…” (Ellen Minkman, http://bit.ly/2bpM7XG)