Abstract
The accuracy of vegetation data collected from permanent forest plots by Virginia and Georgia high school citizen scientists was compared against an expert-developed answer key. Several factors appear to influence citizen scientist data collection accuracy, including education of trainers, biodiversity of vegetation plots, whether students enrolled in an elective or required science course and plot preparation. When university faculty provided training for the high school students during data collection, they achieved 96% accuracy on measuring tree diameters. When undergraduate students provided the training, the accuracy of tree diameter measurements declined to 75%. A forest’s species diversity also influenced data accuracy, with students who measured the more-diverse forest in Georgia being able to identify 80% of the trees correctly, while students working in the less-diverse Virginia forest were able to identify 97% of the species correctly. High school students enrolled in elective agriculture or environmental science classes measured tree diameters more accurately (78% accuracy) than students who were enrolled in mandatory science classes (69% accuracy). The accuracy of data collected by high school citizen scientists increased in plots where researchers placed metal tags on all trees that needed to be sampled (6% error rate), rather than having students establish the plot dimensions with measuring tapes and determine for themselves what trees were in or out of their sampling plot (95% error rate).
 5 Fuhrman_2014 NACTA Journal.pdf | [ ] | 331 kB |
