Redmap: large-scale approaches to ecological monitoring and community engagement through citizen science

Participants in citizen science projects have the capacity to record observations of their environment with high precision and accuracy, however, challenges remain in making large-scale collection and verification of species data by the (potentially) untrained public a robust long-term endeavour. Redmap (Range Extension Database and Mapping project, www.redmap.org.au) invites members of the Australian public to submit photographs and data about unusual observations of marine species made while undertaking marine activities like fishing, diving, boating, and beachcombing. Citizen science projects aimed at ecological monitoring can be programs that have a small number of highly trained contributors where the data obtained can be as accurate as that from professional scientifically trained observers, through to those with a comparatively larger number of contributors but with a (generally) lower level of training. Projects that operate at a larger scale, and without extensive formal training of contributors, are often criticised regarding the scientific rigour of observations submitted. Adoption of such datasets may be hindered by a perception they are of low quality in comparison to those collected by scientists. Redmap has designed a distributed data verification system to allow a ‘managed crowdsourcing’ of scientists for data verification and processing of every observed submitted. Each species in the Redmap database is linked directly to one or more of 80 scientific experts around the country and each observation location (provided by the user) is compared to the pre-identified and pre-defined distribution for a species. The Redmap model provides a unique and semi-automated framework for efficiently collecting, collating, verifying, sharing and utilizing geo-referenced species observational data.