Story | 10 Nov, 2021

Community-based Environmental Monitoring special section in BioScience

 

Over recent decades, community-based environmental monitoring has exploded in popularity. A special section in BioScience describes the potential for such efforts to advance the scientific enterprise well into the future and make recommendations for future directions.

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Villagers in a community-based monitoring group in Myanmar's Natmataung National Park collect information on natural resources, discuss changes in their status, and agree on solutions to problems relating to the resources. The villagers monitor fauna and flora species of key importance to them, as well as nontimber forest products, wildfires, water in streams, and access by different people to areas regarded as customary village territories. Led by the nongovernmental organization Spectrum, this program uses villagers’ expert knowledge of their environment to encourage biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Villager-led monitoring can enable a constructive dialogue between government staff and villagers and, at the same time, help adapt the management of the land to the realities on the ground. In a Special Section in BioScience, several articles discuss challenges to and opportunities for bottom-up approaches to natural resource monitoring.

Photo: Martin Enghoff

Many conservation practitioners engage community members in monitoring and management of biodiversity and natural resources. Over recent decades, community-based environmental monitoring (often called "co-created citizen science" or “locally-based monitoring”) has exploded in popularity.

A special section in BioScience describes the potential for such efforts to advance the sustainable development agenda and the scientific enterprise well into the future and make recommendations for future directions. Readers can access this section here: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/pages/community-based-monitoring-2021

Open Access links to the Special Section on community-based monitoring, BioScience:

  1. Expanding the Impact of Citizen Science
  2. The Concept, Practice, Application, and Results of Locally Based Monitoring
  3. The Use of Digital Platforms for Community-Based Monitoring
  4. Creating Synergies between Citizen Science and Indigenous and Local Knowledge
  5. Connecting Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches in Environmental Observing

Guest post by Finn DanielsenIUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) member

Learn more at the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS): The Growing Promise of Community-Based Monitoring and Citizen Science