Trends, Gaps and Opportunities for Participatory Biodiversity Science in Luxembourg

Section: Digital Information Service on Natural Heritage

Responsible staff: Julian Wittische

Research strategy: Understand and Conserve Nature; Society and Natural History

Luxembourg is one of the most active countries in participatory science, yet it is affected by severe ecological degradation. The use of participatory (or citizen) science data has expanded greatly in biodiversity research in recent years. Platforms such as iNaturalist, Observation.org and eBird alone have surpassed two billion observations.

Through this project, an analysis is carried out of observer behaviour and of spatial, temporal, ecological and taxonomic biases in citizen‑science data. Guides will be created for citizen scientists to help improve coverage of species or habitats that have so far been neglected. Certain municipalities in Luxembourg are abnormally poor in data.

These gaps identified by the MNHNL team will serve as a basis for organising acceleration events to encourage the public to adopt citizen science, as well as for carrying out inventories by more experienced observers. Finally, data‑quality assessment will also be carried out by systematically verifying identifications (species determination) across the tree of life. Automated alerts and checks for newly observed species (native or introduced) in Luxembourg—species that may have escaped the attention of our curators and collaborators—will be implemented.

External collaborator : Bruno Eusebi