Citizen science is increasingly being integrated into formal research and is now recognized as its own field. Work is being done to define the field and describe different typologies of citizen science, as well as use it to inform scientific decision-making. Citizen science helps increase scientific literacy, which is important for every-day decision-making that has wide-ranging influence on human well-being and ecosystem resilience. In a response to the call to creatively use citizen science typologies, we describe a co-constructed citizen science project and report the preliminary results. The project integrates citizen science, adaptive management, and a formal ecological experiment. Collaborators include one scientist and three citizen scientists, two of whom own the land where the study is being performed. The ecological goals of the project are to assess the implementation of forest-scale planting methods for limber pines to planting a windbreak in a high-elevation grassland in Colorado. Past attempts to plant in this location were unsuccessful. We planted 40 seedlings on the north, east, and west sides of nurse objects (logs) and without a nurse object. Survival, growth, and health, as well as the integration of all participants into the research process are all metrics used to evaluate the project.
Results/Conclusions
We were successfully able to collaboratively design and implement a small planting research project. We had to navigate trade-offs between the land owners’ needs for an effective windbreak with the requirements for research design. Additional challenges, such as seedling availability and the logistics of planting, were not unique to this citizen science project; they were similar to those the scientist faced in a larger planting project she performed in collaboration with the United States Forest Service. The citizen-scientist collaborators were involved in research design, project implementation, and data collection, and will continue to be involved in these processes as well as data interpretation and publication of results, as well as application of the results to future management decisions. Based on the preliminary results the citizen-scientists are already planning additional plantings on their land. In the planting study, the first growing season all seedlings were alive across all treatments; results from analyses of summer 2018 growth, health, and survival will also be presented. This collaboration provides an example of a small scale experimental citizen science project that is producing peer-reviewed outputs while also meeting personal and social-ecological goals of the citizen-scientists involved and providing data for future conservation and decisions.