---
title: "Citizen science"
chunk: 17/19
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:48:48.750305+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Europe ===
The English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) is widely regarded to have been one of the earliest citizen science contributors in Europe (see § History). A century later, citizen science was experienced by adolescents in Italy during the 1980s, working on urban energy usages and air pollution.
In his book "Citizen Science", Alan Irwin considers the role that scientific expertise can play in bringing the public and science together and building a more scientifically active citizenry, empowering individuals to contribute to scientific development. Since then a citizen science green paper was published in 2013, and European Commission policy directives have included citizen science as one of five strategic areas with funding allocated to support initiatives through the 'Science With and For Society (SwafS)', a strand of the Horizon 2020 programme. This includes significant awards such as the EU Citizen Science Project, which is creating a hub for knowledge sharing, coordination, and action. The European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) was set up in 2014 to encourage the growth of citizen science across Europe, to increase public participation in scientific processes, mainly by initiating and supporting citizen science projects as well as conducting research. ECSA has a membership of over 250 individual and organisational members from over 30 countries across the European Union and beyond.
Examples of citizen science organisations and associations based in Europe include the Biosphere Expeditions (Ireland), Bürger schaffen Wissen (Germany), Scivil (Belgium), Citizen Science Lab at Leiden University (Netherlands), Ibercivis (See External Links), Österreich forscht (Austria). Other organisations can be found here: EU Citizen Science.
The European Citizen Science Association was created in 2014, with some nations also having national bodies, such as Citizen Science Ireland.
In 2023, the European Union Prize for Citizen Science was established. Bestowed through Ars Electronica, the prize was designed to honor, present and support "outstanding projects whose social and political impact advances the further development of a pluralistic, inclusive and sustainable society in Europe".

==== Example projects ====
Garden birdwatches such as the Irish Garden Bird Survey by BirdWatch Ireland and the Big Garden Birdwatch by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds invite members of the public to record the wild birds that they see in their garden. The species are then tracked over time.
Photographs of The Northern Lights or "Aurora Borealis" over the island of Ireland taken by the public were collected by scientists in Ireland, in a project called Aurora Éire.
Water Blitz is a citizen science project by Dublin City University, where citizen scientists help collect water samples and provide their perspectives on water quality and pollution.
The Irish Hedgehog Survey coordinated by scientists at the National University of Ireland at Galway encourages recording on the distribution and health of hedgehogs in Ireland

=== Latin America ===

In 2015, the Asháninka people from Apiwtxa, which crosses the border between Brazil and Peru, began using the Android app Sapelli to monitor their land. The Ashaninka have "faced historical pressures of disease, exploitation and displacement, and today still face the illegal invasion of their lands by loggers and hunters. This monitoring project shows how the Apiwtxa Ashaninka from the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Territory, Brazil, are beginning to use smartphones and technological tools to monitor these illegal activities more effectively."
In Argentina, two smartphone Android applications are available for citizen science. i) AppEAR has been developed at the Institute of Limnology and was launched in May 2016. Joaquín Cochero is a researcher who developed an "application that appeals to the collaboration of users of mobile devices in collecting data that allow the study of aquatic ecosystems" (translation). Cochero stated: "Not much of citizen science in Argentina, just a few more oriented to astronomy specific cases. As ours is the first. And I have volunteers from different parts of the country that are interested in joining together to centralize data. That's great because these types of things require many people participate actively and voluntarily" (translation). ii) eBird was launched in 2013, and has so far identified 965 species of birds. eBird in Argentina is "developed and managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University, one of the most important ornithological institutions in the world, and locally presented recently with the support of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation of the Nation (MINCyT)" (translation).
In Argentina, a citizen-led initiative known as Human Cognitive Engineering (HCE/IC-H), established in 2025, investigates biophysical pathways such as PIEZO1 and PIEZO2 mechanotransduction. This project utilizes open-source repositories to document Prior Art, aiming to maintain fundamental biological mechanisms as public knowledge in alignment with UNESCO 2026 Neuro-rights standards. The framework describes human physiology through General Systems Theory (GST), focusing on fascial signaling and the Grotthuss proton-jump mechanism for systemic homeostasis.