Stenhouse Alan, Perry Tahlia, Grützner Frank, Rismiller Peggy, Koh Lian Pin, Lewis Megan
School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
Biol Conserv. 2022 Mar;267:109470. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109470. Epub 2022 Feb 4.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has imposed restrictions on people's movement, work and access to places at multiple international, national and sub-national scales. We need a better understanding of how the varied restrictions have impacted wildlife monitoring as gaps in data continuity caused by these disruptions may limit future data use and analysis. To assess the effect of different levels of COVID-19 restrictions on both citizen science and traditional wildlife monitoring, we analyse observational records of a widespread and iconic monotreme, the Australian short-beaked echidna (), in three states of Australia. We compare citizen science to observations from biodiversity data repositories across the three states by analysing numbers of observations, coverage in protected areas, and geographic distribution using an index of remoteness and accessibility. We analyse the effect of restriction levels by comparing these data from each restriction level in 2020 with corresponding periods in 2018-2019. Our results indicate that stricter and longer restrictions reduced numbers of scientific observations while citizen science showed few effects, though there is much variation due to differences in restriction levels in each state. Geographic distribution and coverage of protected and non-protected areas were also reduced for scientific monitoring while citizen science observations were little affected. This study shows that citizen science can continue to record accurate and widely distributed species observational data, despite pandemic restrictions, and thus demonstrates the potential value of citizen science to other researchers who require reliable data during periods of disruption.
全球新冠疫情在国际、国家和次国家等多个层面上对人们的出行、工作以及进入场所的机会施加了限制。我们需要更好地了解这些不同的限制措施是如何影响野生动物监测的，因为这些干扰导致的数据连续性缺口可能会限制未来的数据使用和分析。为了评估不同级别的新冠疫情限制措施对公民科学和传统野生动物监测的影响，我们分析了澳大利亚三个州一种分布广泛且具有代表性的单孔目动物——澳大利亚短吻针鼹的观测记录。我们通过分析观测数量、保护区覆盖范围以及使用偏远和可达性指数分析地理分布情况，将公民科学观测数据与这三个州生物多样性数据存储库中的观测数据进行比较。我们通过将2020年每个限制级别的这些数据与2018 - 2019年的相应时期进行比较，来分析限制级别的影响。我们的结果表明，更严格、持续时间更长的限制措施减少了科学观测的数量，而公民科学观测受影响较小，不过由于每个州限制级别不同存在很大差异。科学监测中保护区和非保护区的地理分布及覆盖范围也有所减少，而公民科学观测受影响不大。这项研究表明，尽管有疫情限制，公民科学仍能继续记录准确且分布广泛的物种观测数据，从而证明了公民科学对于其他在干扰时期需要可靠数据的研究人员的潜在价值。
