Citizen Science: Building an Early Warning System for Biodiversity

Lecture series coordinated by Professor Les Underhill, Director, Animal Demography Unit, Department of Zoology, UCT

The Animal Demography Unit (ADU) has been building digital biodiversity databases for twenty years. Most have been collected by ‘citizen scientists’ in a variety of teams and projects. About 16 million records of biodiversity cover mainly birds, reptiles, butterflies and mammals. This lecture series, which forms part of the ADU’s twentieth anniversary activities, looks at the lessons learnt over two decades and considers the potential role of citizen science in helping to build an early warning system for biodiversity. For each project we ask: ‘How have the data been used, especially in conservation applications?’ ‘What difference does the participation of citizen scientists make to the project?’ And ultimately, ‘How does this make a difference to the animals themselves?’

Assembling the jigsaw puzzle of biodiversity out of the individual pieces of data contributed by citizen scientists requires intensive data analysis and interpretation. The first lecture looks at the way in which the ADU uses the citizen science database to interpret how and why the distributions and abundance of species have changed and what can be done about it. The second lecture considers the butterfly atlas and the ‘butterfly census weeks’ developed to monitor trends in butterfly populations in South Africa. The third and fifth lectures focus on the involvement of citizens in bird monitoring, one related to the bird atlas and the other to bird ringing. The new mammal atlas which aims to compile information about mammals in the whole of Africa, including Madagascar, is highlighted in the fourth lecture.

LECTURE TITLES
1. Citizen science - Professor Les Underhill
Download podcast: https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/6e2ca09f-6e0c-4496-86ff-53c4...
2. Butterfly atlas - Dr Silvia Mecenero
Download podcast: https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/6e2ca09f-6e0c-4496-86ff-53c4...
3. Bird atlas - Doug Harebottle
Download podcast: https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/6e2ca09f-6e0c-4496-86ff-53c4...
4. Mammal atlas - Dr Tali Hoffman
Download podcast: https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/6e2ca09f-6e0c-4496-86ff-53c4...
5. Bird ringing - Dr Dieter Oschadleus
Download podcast: https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/6e2ca09f-6e0c-4496-86ff-53c4...

Websites:
ADU http://adu.org.za/
Virtual Museum http://vmus.adu.org.za/
South African Bird Ringing Unit (SAFRING) http://safring.adu.org.za/