Chairgroup Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
De Waterspin Advies, Arnhem, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2022 Feb 25;17(2):e0263899. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263899. eCollection 2022.
Progressively more community initiatives have been undertaken over last decades to monitor water quality. Biological data collected by volunteers has been used for biodiversity and water quality studies. Despite the many citizen science projects collecting and using macroinvertebrates, the number of scientific peer-reviewed publications that use this data, remains limited. In 2018, a citizen science project on biological water quality assessment was launched in the Netherlands. In this project, volunteers collect macroinvertebrates from a nearby waterbody, identify and count the number of specimens, and register the catch through a web portal to instantaneously receive a water quality score based on their data. Water quality monitoring in the Netherlands is traditionally the field of professionals working at water authorities. Here, we compare the data from the citizen science project with the data gathered by professionals. We evaluate information regarding type and distribution of sampled waterbodies and sampling period, and compare general patterns in both datasets with respect to collected animals and calculated water quality scores. The results show that volunteers and professionals seldomly sample the same waterbody, that there is some overlap in sampling period, and that volunteers more frequently sampled urban waters and smaller waterbodies. The citizen science project is thus yielding data about understudied waters and this spatial and temporal complementarity is useful. The character and thoroughness of the assessments by volunteers and professionals are likely to differentiate. Volunteers collected significantly lower numbers of animals per sample and fewer animals from soft sediments like worms and more mobile individuals from the open water column such as boatsmen and beetles. Due to the lack of simultaneous observations at various locations by volunteers and professionals, a direct comparison of water quality scores is impossible. However, the obtained patterns from both datasets show that the water quality scores between volunteers and professionals are dissimilar for the different water types. To bridge these differences, new tools and processes need to be further developed to increase the value of monitoring biological water quality by volunteers for professionals.
过去几十年来，越来越多的社区倡议开始监测水质。志愿者收集的生物数据已被用于生物多样性和水质研究。尽管有许多公民科学项目在收集和使用大型无脊椎动物，但使用这些数据的科学同行评议出版物的数量仍然有限。2018 年，荷兰启动了一项生物水质评估的公民科学项目。在该项目中，志愿者从附近的水体中采集大型无脊椎动物，识别并计数标本数量，并通过网络门户注册捕获物，即时根据他们的数据获得水质得分。荷兰的水质监测传统上是由在水务局工作的专业人员负责的。在这里，我们将公民科学项目的数据与专业人员收集的数据进行比较。我们评估了有关采样水体的类型和分布以及采样期的信息，并比较了两个数据集在收集的动物和计算的水质得分方面的一般模式。结果表明，志愿者和专业人员很少采样相同的水体，采样期存在一些重叠，而且志愿者更频繁地采样城市水域和较小的水体。因此，公民科学项目正在产生有关研究不足的水体的数据，这种空间和时间上的互补性是有用的。志愿者和专业人员的评估性质和彻底性可能存在差异。志愿者每样本采集的动物数量明显较少，而且采集的软沉积物中的动物较少，如水蚯蚓，以及开放水体柱中的移动个体较多，如划船者和甲虫。由于志愿者和专业人员没有在不同地点同时进行观察，因此无法直接比较水质得分。然而，两个数据集获得的模式表明，志愿者和专业人员对不同类型的水体的水质得分存在差异。为了弥合这些差异，需要进一步开发新的工具和流程，以提高志愿者监测生物水质对专业人员的价值。
