Connecting People and Biodiversity
Citizen science at iDiv creates opportunities for people to actively participate in biodiversity research. By connecting scientists with engaged members of the public and civil society, we foster collaboration across disciplines and communities. Together with NGOs, natural history societies, museums, and conservation agencies, our researcher’s develop and run projects that generate valuable data and insights into the state of biodiversity — on land, in water, and in soil.
Citizen Science Projects
Science thrives when the public gets involved.
Researching Citizen Science at iDiv
At iDiv, we not only run several citizen science projects — we also conduct research on citizen science itself. Our researchers’ focus includes ecological questions such as how citizen science can foster innovation in biodiversity research, how structured and opportunistic data can be combined, and how infrastructures for citizen science can be developed, including platforms like the Living Atlas Nature Germany or monitoring apps.
In addition, iDiv researchers study the effects of citizen science on people, explore how it promotes learning-by-doing and scientific understanding, supports nature conservation, and encourages environmental behaviour, and well-being.
To further develop citizen science, researcher’s at iDiv co-led the creation of Germany’s Citizen Science Strategy 2030 in collaboration with a broad range of stakeholders from research and civil society. They also work with societal experts to co-develop biodiversity analyses. This includes compiling datasets on various taxa from diverse sources — including citizen science data — and developing and applying statistical methods to analyse them.
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