ALA Citizen Science Central
Resources and tools for Australia’s biodiversity projects
‘Citizen’-based contributions to mainstream scientific investigations are becoming increasingly important. Technology is helping to facilitate this by enabling projects to be more accessible to the public, providing greater effectiveness of communications between science practitioners and citizen scientists, and providing accessible data collection and management tools which improve the flow and quality of data.
For the Atlas, citizen science is a very important source of data about biodiversity. Data and insights gained through the efforts of citizen scientists can be as valuable as those obtained by scientists working in academia, natural history collections, government agencies and business. Harnessing the enthusiasm, interest and efforts of the thousands of people participating in citizen science will continue to enhance the range and depth of data available for analysis and research.
The ALA is a strong supporter of citizen science and is a partner of the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA)
ALA’s Citizen Science Central is underpinned by our BioCollect Project Finder and Data Collection Software
Tell me more about BioCollect >
What is ‘citizen science’?
The Open Scientist website offers this definition of citizen science: ‘The systematic collection and analysis of data, determination of technology, testing of natural phenomena, and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis.’ For Australia’s biodiversity, it is the participation of anyone who is not a practising ecologist, taxonomist, or biological scientist, in the collection of biodiversity related data.
Get involved in citizen science
Sometimes citizen science projects are run as short campaigns, such as bioblitzes, and sometimes they are ongoing data collection projects. You can get as involved as much or as little as you like, but in all cases your sightings are valued contributions to the scientific knowledge and the national biodiversity database.
Start recording the organisms in your own area and on your travels, and join thousands of other people in building Australia’s biodiversity knowledge. Get yourself on the Citizen Science Leader Board by recording as many different species as you can.
Perhaps you are interested in a particular species or group of species. Why not join an existing project or create your own project.
There are several ways for you to participate in citizen science:
- Add your sightings of plants or animals directly into the Atlas of Living Australia
- Contribute your sightings to one of the many citizen science projects currently happening in different areas of Australia. These range from species specific projects (eg. Koala counts, frogwatch, etc.) to regional or national multi-species themed projects (eg. FeralScan, ACT and Southern Tablelands Weedspotter, Waterwatch, etc.), or regional atlases (eg. the Atlas of Life in the Coastal Wilderness).
- If you have skills in identifying organisms, why not join BowerBird and help other people identify their sightings.
- Join the fun and interesting projects in DigiVol which are using crowdsourcing to digitise all sorts of resources into data which can be searched and analysed to improve our knowledge of biodiversity and the natural world.
- Get involved in the Australian Citizen Science Association or a group which is already running citizen science projects, such as one of the ALA affiliates.
Download the new Australian BioBlitz Guidelines developed by members of the Australian Citizen Science Association.
Visit the Australian BioBlitz Hub
Tips & Tricks
It can often be difficult to accurately identify a sighting out in the field and identifying organisms to species level can be challenging even for experts in some groups of organisms. Below are some tips and tricks to help even the most seasoned Citizen Scientist improve their contributions.
Improve your nature photography
Including good quality photos with your sighting record is important to support bo