In 2014, the Miistakis Institute hosted a Citizen Science Conference, exploring this diverse field with sessions on program design, evaluation, policy implications, technology and applications in parks and protected areas. This links to the website that chronicled that event.
Danah Duke
Exploring the Potential for Place-based Citizen Science to Advance Conservation: lessons learned from Alberta case studies
Speaker Bio: Danah has been the Executive Director of the Miistakis Institute for the past 17 years. The Miistakis Institute is a not for profit environmental research institute affiliated with Mount Royal University in Calgary Alberta. Miistakis scientifically investigates environmental challenges, analyzes policy implications, develops decision support tools, and catalyzes community conservation action to realize environmental benefits and outcomes. Her role as the ED of Miistakis puts Danah at the interface between academia, policy and decision-making and community conservation. Through her tenure at Miistakis, Danah has developed skills in various conservation related disciplines that include policy analysis, research design, wildlife management, transportation ecology, citizen science and ecosystem services. Her experience also includes non-profit management and governance, facilitation and collaboration and community engagement. Danah holds M.Sc. in Environmental Biology and Ecology at the University of Alberta and a B.Sc. in Biology from McMaster University.
Presentation: Exploring the Potential for Place-based Citizen Science to Advance Conservation: lessons learned from Alberta case studies
Citizen science projects range from global, distributed, big data initiatives to local, in-person, place-based projects. While large-scale initiatives can address spatial and temporal barriers impacting specific scientific outcomes, place-based citizen science has the potential impact local decision-making, address local conservation concerns and engage local citizens to take environmental action.
The Miistakis Institute takes a place-based citizen science approach to address a diversity of conservation issues. We do this because society is facing complex conservation challenges and we believe stronger sustainable solutions engage citizens in better understanding the issue, contributing personal knowledge and experience, and implementation.
From over 14 years of experience in designing and implementing place-based citizen science programs across Alberta addressing a broad range of conservation issues including wildlife connectivity and movement, grizzly bear conservation, and wetland health we have gained critical insight to the elements that lend to implementation of successful citizen science programs. These include: addressing the inherent tensions that exist between citizen engagement and science goals, diversity of skill sets required for successful program design, establishing data quality and validation components, alignment of data needs and community interest, investing adequate resources to ensure program implementation and recognizing the importance of building a community of support for citizen science programs.
By building public knowledge about environmental issues and their causes and providing opportunities to engage in these issues, place-based citizen science projects have the potential to support environmental monitoring and decision-making in Alberta and enhance conservation outcomes.