Citizen Science Working Group

• CSWG Chair: Rob Grew (EA)
• Secretariat Lead: Michael Pocock
• Secretariat Support: Aoife Sweeney
• Read about our latest activities

Citizen science can broadly be defined as the involvement of volunteers in science. It has a vital role in scientific research and education, and the potential to help meet some of the challenging demands of environmental monitoring at the national scale. This gives citizen science a clear relevance to government policy across the UK, and puts citizen science firmly on the agenda for UKEOF.

The UKEOF Citizen Science Working Group aims to provide a forum where member organisations can share good practice and discuss future needs and plans for working with volunteers to provide high quality, environmental observation data.

As part of regular citizen science working group, members provide updates about their organisation's initiatives to inform the wider community of areas of work or planned events.

The CSWG has produced a variety of outputs, including the following key briefing notes and reports:

Additional CSWG outputs:

• Workshop 'Using Social Media as a Data Source for Environmental Science' (9 Dec 2020)
  Speakers' presentations
• Workshop report: Maximising the benefits from citizen science for monitoring the environment
  Report from the UKEOF citizen science workshop held in January 2018 (Birmingham)
• Citizen Science Report
  UKEOF commissioned NERC's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (working with the Natural History Museum) to carry out a project looking at the role of volunteers in environmental monitoring, resulting in a report: Understanding Citizen Science and Environmental Monitoring

If you would like to get involved or find out more information please contact the secretariat on office@ukeof.org.uk.

Current member organisations are:

• Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Kieran Hyder)
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Hugh Smith, Lisa Smith [C])
• Environment Agency (Rob Grew, Kelly Haynes)
• Forest Research (Peter Crow)
• Joint Nature Conservation Committee (Niki Newton)
• Met Office (Alice Palmer Brown)
• National Biodiversity Network Trust (Giselle Sterry)
• National Oceanography Centre (Sara Fowell)
• Natural England (Andy Nisbet [C], Kathy Gill, Oliver Grafton, Andy Jefferies, Katrin Bohn)
• Natural Resources Wales (Dylan Lloyd, Sue Byrne [C])
• NatureScot (Alan Cameron)
• NERC British Geological Survey (Patrick Bell)
• Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Catherine Evans)
• UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (Abigail Lowe)
• UK Environmental Observation Framework (Michael Pocock, Aoife Sweeney, Don Monteith [C])

[C] Corresponding member