Guest post by Steffen Fritz, Linda See & Ian McCallum of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

{credit}Steffen Fritz, Linda See & Ian McCallum{/credit}

Citizen science, the collection or analysis of research data by the general public, has existed in one form or another for centuries, with contributions ranging from plant and animal observations to weather phenonmena¹. In the field of land cover and land use, however, its application is relatively new². Previously this was a task left largely to governments, research institutes and global bodies. With the recent availability of high resolution satellite imagery, this has changed, opening up new possibilities for citizen participation³. In our recent article in Nature Research’s Scientific Data⁴, we have made available a global dataset of crowdsourced land cover and land use reference data, containing the results of our first four citizen-science campaigns. Continue reading →