A Mobile Application&ndash;Based Citizen Science Product to Compile Bird Observations

Ossi Nokelainen; Patrik Lauha; Sebastian Andrejeff; Jari Hänninen; Jasmin Inkinen; Aleksi Kallio; Harry J. Lehto; Marko Mutanen; Riku Paavola; Pauliina Schiestl-Aalto; Panu Somervuo; Janne Sundell; Jussi Talaskivi; Mikko Vallinmäki; Aurélie Vancraeyenest; Ari Lehtiö; Otso Ovaskainen

doi:10.5334/cstp.710

Abstract

Citizen science covers initiatives from crowdsourcing, distributed intelligence, and participatory science, to extreme citizen science. Terminological overlap, varied project aims, and cultural differences in the fields of research have, however, led to discord regarding how impactful citizen science projects can be. Here, we showcase a mobile application–based citizen science campaign (in Finnish: Muuttolintujen kevät), an automated bird sound classifier of Finnish birds. Over a single season (2023), the method attracted 140,000 participants who uploaded close to three million recordings containing six million bird observations. We report the spatial and temporal distribution of the observations collected, characterize the user behaviour, and discuss reliability of the user-based validations of the AI-powered species identifications. To circumvent data quality problems that characterize many citizen science projects, our approach stores the raw audio in a centralized repository, enabling rigorous validation and re-analysis. Mobile application-based citizen science initiatives can be harnessed to probe the state of our environment almost in real time and potentially guide conservation acts in the future.

References

1Amano, T., Lamming, J.D.L. and Sutherland, W.J. (2016). Spatial gaps in global biodiversity information and the role of citizen science, BioScience, 66(5), pp. 393–400. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biw022
Back to article
2Balázs, B., Mooney, P., Nováková, E., Bastin, L. and Jokar Arsanjani, J. (2021). Data quality in citizen science. In: The Science of Citizen Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 139–157. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_8
Back to article
3Bonney, R., Phillips, T.B., Ballard, H.L. and Enck, J.W. (2016). Can citizen science enhance public understanding of science?. Public Understanding of Science, 25(1), pp. 2–16. DOI: 10.1177/0963662515607406
Back to article
4Bonney, R., Shirk, J.L., Phillips, T.B., Wiggins, A., Ballard, H.L., Miller-Rushing, A.J. and Parrish, J.K. (2014). Citizen science: next steps for citizen science, Science, 343(6178): 1436–1437. DOI: 10.1126/science.1251554
Back to article
5Courter, J.R., Johnson, R.J., Stuyck, C.M., Lang, B.A. and Kaiser, E.W. (2013). Weekend bias in citizen science data reporting: implications for phenology studies, International Journal of Biometeorology, 57(5), pp. 715–720. DOI: 10.1007/s00484-012-0598-7
Back to article
6Di Cecco, G.J., Barve, V., Belitz, M.W., Stucky, B.J., Guralnick, R.P. and Hurlbert, A.H. (2021). Observing the observers: how participants contribute data to iNaturalist and implications for biodiversity science, BioScience, 71(11), pp. 1179–1188. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biab093
Back to article
7Dickinson, J.L., Zuckerberg, B. and Bonter, D.N. (2010). Citizen science as an ecological research tool: challenges and benefits, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 41(1), pp. 149–172. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-102209-144636
Back to article
8Frigerio, D., Richter, A., Per, E., Pruse, B. and Vohland, K. (2021). Citizen science in the natural sciences. In: The Science of Citizen Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 79–96. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_5
Back to article
9Haklay, M. (2013). Citizen science and volunteered geographic information: overview and typology of participation. In: Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 105–122. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4587-2_7
Back to article
10Haklay, M., Dörler, D., Heigl, F., Manzoni, M., Hecker, S. and Vohland, K. (2021). What is citizen science? The challenges of definition. In: The Science of Citizen Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 13–33. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_2
Back to article
11Heigl, F., Kieslinger, B., Paul, K.T., Uhlik, J. and Dörler, D. (2019). Toward an international definition of citizen science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 116 (17), pp. 8089–8092. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1903393116
Back to article
12Kahl, S., Wood, C.M., Eibl, M. and Klinck, H. (2021). BirdNET: A deep learning solution for avian diversity monitoring, Ecological Informatics, 61, 101236. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2021.101236
Back to article
13Knape, J., Coulson, S.J., van der Wal, R. and Arlt, D. (2022). Temporal trends in opportunistic citizen science reports across multiple taxa, Ambio, 51(1), pp. 183–198. DOI: 10.1007/s13280-021-01550-w
Back to article
14Land-Zandstra, A., Agnello, G. and Gültekin, Y.S. (2021). Participants in citizen science. In: The science of citizen science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 243–259. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_13
Back to article
15Lauha, P., Somervuo, P., Lehikoinen, P., Geres, L., Richter, T., Seibold, S. and Ovaskainen, O. (2022). Domain-specific neural networks improve automated bird sound recognition already with small amount of local data, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13(12), pp. 2799–2810. DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.14003
Back to article
16Lehikoinen, P., Rannisto, M., Camargo, U., Aintila, A., Lauha, P., Piirainen, E., Somervuo, P. and Ovaskainen, O. (2022). Data from: Crowdsourcing training material for automated bird sound classification – a pilot study. zenodo.org, 12 September 2022. Available at https://zenodo.org/records/7030863 [Last accessed 1 November 2023].
Back to article
17Lehikoinen, P., Rannisto, M., Camargo, U., Aintila, A., Lauha, P., Piirainen, E., Somervuo, P. and Ovaskainen, O. (2023). A successful crowdsourcing approach for bird sound classification, Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 8(1), pp. 1–14. DOI: 10.5334/cstp.556
Back to article
18MacLeod, C.J. and Scott, K. (2021). Mechanisms for enhancing public engagement with citizen science results, People and Nature, 3(1), pp. 32–50. DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10152
Back to article
19Meschini, M., Machado Toffolo, M., Marchini, C., Caroselli, E., Prada, F., Mancuso, A., Franzellitti, S., Locci, L., Davoli, M., Trittoni, M., Nanetti, E., Tittarelli, M., Bentivogli, R., Branchini, S., Neri, P. and Goffredo, S. (2021). Reliability of data collected by volunteers: a nine-year citizen science study in the Red Sea, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9: 694258. DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.694258
Back to article
20Moran, I.G., Lukianchuk, K.C., Doucet, Stéphanie.M., Newman, A.E.M., Williams, H., Norris, D.R. and Mennill, D.J. (2019). Diel and seasonal patterns of variation in the singing behaviour of Savannah Sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis), Avian Research, 10(1), 26. DOI: 10.1186/s40657-019-0165-6
Back to article
21Pelacho, M., Rodríguez, H., Broncano, F., Kubus, R., García, F.S., Gavete, B. and Lafuente, A. (2021). Science as a commons: improving the governance of knowledge through citizen science. In: The Science of Citizen Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 57–78. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_4
Back to article
22Robbins, C.S. (1981). Effect of time of day on bird activity, Studies in Avian Biology, 6, pp. 275–286.
Back to article
23Rüfenacht, S., Woods, T., Agnello, G., Gold, M., Hummer, P., Land-Zandstra, A. and Sieber, A. (2021). Communication and dissemination in citizen science. In: The Science of Citizen Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 475–494. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_24
Back to article
24Santangeli, A., Haukka, A., Morris, W., Arkkila, S., Delhey, K., Kempenaers, B., Valcu, M., Dale, J., Lehikoinen, A. and Mammola, S. (2023). What drives our aesthetic attraction to birds?, npj Biodiversity, 2(1), 20, pp. 1–7. DOI: 10.1038/s44185-023-00026-2
Back to article
25Statistics Finland, Population Grid Data. (2022). 5 km × 5 km, retrieved from Statistics Finland’s interface service on 13.11.2023 with the licence CC BY 4.0.
Back to article
26Stuber, E.F., Robinson, O.J., Bjerre, E.R., Otto, M.C., Millsap, B.A., Zimmerman, G.S., Brasher, M.G., Ringelman, K.M., Fournier, A.M.V., Yetter, A., Isola, J.E. and Ruiz-Gutierrez, V. (2022). The potential of semi-structured citizen science data as a supplement for conservation decision-making: Validating the performance of eBird against targeted avian monitoring efforts, Biological Conservation, 270: 109556. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109556
Back to article
27Sullivan, B.L., Aycrigg, J.L., Barry, J.H., Bonney, R.E., Bruns, N., Cooper, C.B., Damoulas, T., Dhondt, A.A., Dietterich, T., Farnsworth, A., Fink, D., Fitzpatrick, J.W., Fredericks, T., Gerbracht, J., Gomes, C., Hochachka, W.M., Iliff, M.J., Lagoze, C., La Sorte, F.A., Merrifield, M., Morris, W., Phillips, T.B., Reynolds, M., Rodewald, A.D., Rosenberg, K. V., Trautmann, N.M., Wiggins, A., Winkler, D.W., Wong, W.-K., Wood, C.L., Yu, J. and Kelling, S. (2014). The eBird enterprise: An integrated approach to development and application of citizen science, Biological Conservation, 169, pp. 31–40. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.003
Back to article
28Thompson, M.M., Moon, K., Woods, A., Rowley, J.J.L., Poore, A.G.B., Kingsford, R.T. and Callaghan, C.T. (2023). Citizen science participant motivations and behaviour: Implications for biodiversity data coverage, Biological Conservation, 282: 110079. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110079
Back to article
29Tiago, P., Ceia-Hasse, A., Marques, T.A., Capinha, C. and Pereira, H.M. (2017a). Spatial distribution of citizen science casuistic observations for different taxonomic groups, Scientific Reports, 7(1): 12832. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13130-8
Back to article
30Tiago, P., Gouveia, M.J., Capinha, C., Santos-Reis, M. and Pereira, H.M. (2017b). The influence of motivational factors on the frequency of participation in citizen science activities. Nature Conservation, 18, pp.61–78. DOI: 10.3897/natureconservation.18.13429
Back to article
31Vohland, K., Land-Zandstra, A., Ceccaroni, L., Lemmens, R., Perelló, J., Ponti, M., Samson, R. and Wagenknecht, K. (2021). Editorial: The science of citizen science evolves. In: The Science of Citizen Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 1–12. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_1
Back to article
32Xeno-canto Foundation. (2005). xeno-canto: Sharing wildlife sounds from around the world. xeno-canto.org, 2005. Available at https://xeno-canto.org/ [Last accessed 1 November 2023].
Back to article
33Xie, J., Zhong, Y., Zhang, J., Liu, S., Ding, C. and Triantafyllopoulos, A. (2023). A review of automatic recognition technology for bird vocalizations in the deep learning era, Ecological Informatics, 73: 101927. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoinf.2022.101927
Back to article

A Mobile Application–Based Citizen Science Product to Compile Bird Observations

Abstract

Paradigm

My account