The word "nemotia"1 is a neologism, a newly coined term that, in this case, describes the sense of overwhelm and disconnect accompanying the thought that nothing you do will ever make a difference. If this describes your current frame of mind, you might find some comfort in a recent discovery made by researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History.
It has to do with citizen science, a sort of reciprocal partnership in which large numbers of non-scientists collect data that is used across multiple disciplines, from environmental monitoring and conservation assessments to public health works and city planning. Those who collect data benefit by engaging with and learning more about the natural world, and scientists have the obvious benefit of acquiring the information needed to do their job.
Many citizen scientists are passionate about the work they do. But, as with most other volunteer opportunites, those who are able to participate the most tend to have an ample reserve of time, money and expertise. Volunteers who lack these resources generally participate less.
But a new study shows that contributions from both groups can be equally valuable and — in some cases — even complement each other. The results are based on millions of observations uploaded to iNaturalist , an online, community based platform where users can help each other identify species, keep track of what they've found, participate in competitions and organize local survey — or bioblitz — events.
The lead author, Erin Grady, undertook the study while pursuing a master's degree at the Florida Museum. She's now the engagement coordinator for the USA National Phenology Network , an organization that mobilizes volunteers to document the cyclical ways in which plants and animals change from one season to the next.
"There's often this idea that we want everyone to be as highly active as possible and collect the most amount of data. We tend to focus on super-users," Grady said. "Something I got out of our results is maybe we shouldn't be striving for just that. Every type of observation and way of observing counts, which sounds cheesy, but it's true."
Grady became interested in the subject after experiencing her own bout of nemotia. Though she originally intended to study the timing of plant life cycle events and their relationship to environmental variables in graduate school, the ideas she started out with ultimately left her feeling disconnected.
After searching for something she was passionate about, she "fell into this contributary science space, which was the perfect intersection between impactful biodiversity research, community and how people interact with the environment."
Grady wanted to know whether there were any substantial differences between the type of data that casual and highly active iNaturalist users collect. To find out, she selected a large area in the Southeast United States and downloaded all observations made there since iNaturalist was founded in 2008. This gave her 7.5 million observations taken by roughly 283,000 users. She then organized the observations based on the type of environment they came from, which included categories like protected parks, urban areas and agricultural zones.
iNaturalist observations do not include personal data about the people who made them. So, to get at the socioeconomic side of things, Grady also classified observations based on whether they were made in high- or low-income areas. They split users into travelers and residents based on the proportion of observations they made in the study region compared with those they made elsewhere.
Then they ran the numbers.
"The big picture here is that highly active users are seeking out regions that are biodiversity rich, so they're more likely than casual users to be observing in natural green spaces or on protected land," Grady said. "Casual users are more likely to make observations during their daily life, so within urban areas and neighborhoods."
The tendency for people to observe in a particular type of area results in lopsided, or biased, data that scientists have to account for when conducting their analyses. As a rule, green spaces and protected areas support more biodiversity than urban areas, but it's hard to know the extent to which this is true when they are sampled unevenly.
This study shows that the bias toward natural areas perpetuated by super users is partly balanced by those of casual users.
"We see in the results that you can push back on those biases a little when you're walking your dog or even in your backyard, because we have fewer observations for neighborhoods."
Senior author Rob Guralnick, the curator of biodiversity informatics at the Florida Museum, has published multiple studies on the effect development has on biodiversity using iNaturalist data. He emphasized the need for balancing out user biases.
"The place where we're going to discover the most about the total, global impact of urbanization on animals and plants is through things like iNaturalist, because if we want to learn about how increasing impermeable surfaces or hydrological disruptions or urban heat and light affect living systems, we need replicated data across hundreds of cities. Citizen science is a global phenomena, and more and more people are getting involved," he said.
Observations can be powerful in other ways as well, Grady explained. Low-income areas are often underrepresented in iNaturalist and on other citizen science platforms. This has implications for how much scientists know about biodiversity in those areas. It also affects the potential for positive change.
"One of the great things about citizen science is that communities can collect data and use it to advocate for themselves."
But if you were to ask Grady or Guralnick about the single most important aspect of citizen science, they'd tell you it's something that transcends data altogether. It's the same thing that cured Grady's nemotia.
"There's a real change, I think, within people when they start observing. They feel more empowered, fulfilled, connected – and not just connected with the natural world but connected with this global community of people who care about similar things."
Guralnick agreed. "There are so many things we have no agency to do anything about. But one thing we do have some control over every day is to observe, to see the world and to report it and to understand what it tells us about where we are and what we're doing and how we're living, to focus on things that bring joy, happiness and beauty to the world around us. Just observing the natural world is important. I think that's an idea that's going to come up a lot in the next decade."
The study was published in the journal Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.
Additional co-authors of the study are Caitlin Campbell of Bat Conservation International and Corey Callaghan of the University of Florida.
The study was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (grant no. DBI-2223512) and supported by the intramural research program of the United States Department of Agriculture (FLA-FTL-006297).
Footnotes:
1. Pronounced nih-moh-shah, from "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows".
