• CSWG Chair: Rob Grew (EA)
• Secretariat Lead: Michael Pocock
• Secretariat Support: Hannah Risser
  

Citizen science can broadly be defined as the involvement of volunteers in science. It has a vital role in scientific research and education, and the potential to help meet some of the challenging demands of environmental monitoring at the national scale. This gives citizen science a clear relevance to government policy across the UK, and puts citizen science firmly on the agenda for UKEOF.

Our role

The UKEOF Citizen Science Working Group aims to provide a forum where member organisations can share good practice and discuss future needs and plans for working with volunteers to provide high quality, environmental observation data.

As part of regular citizen science working group, members provide updates about their organisation's initiatives to inform the wider community of areas of work or planned events.

Publications

The CSWG has produced a variety of outputs, including the following key briefing notes and reports:

• Briefing note 1: Impacts of COVID-19 on environmental citizen science: Lessons learned and recommendations for the future
• Briefing note 2: What is the Future of Citizen Science? What is UKEOF's Role?
• Briefing note 3: Data Management Planning for Citizen Science  
• Briefing note 4: Understanding Motivations for Citizen Science
• Briefing note 5: Understanding Opportunities, Cost and Benefits of Citizen Science
• Publication 6: Guide to Citizen Science

Member organisations

Members are representatives of the broad environmental citizen science community and /or those with specific technical and/or policy relevant roles at a UK, European or international level. Participation is open to central and local government, academia, and research, the private and voluntary sector from across the devolved administration.

Membership is flexible so if you would like to get involved or find out more information please contact the secretariat on office@ukeof.org.uk.

Current member organisations are:

• Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Kieran Hyder)
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Jake Morris, Lisa Smith*)
• Environment Agency (Rob Grew)
• Forestry Commission / Forest Research (Jake Morris, Liz O’Brien)
• Joint Nature Conservation Committee (Anna Robinson)
• Marine Biological Association (Jon Parr)
• Met Office (Lucy Henretty-Lee)
• National Oceanography Centre (Sara Fowell)
• Natural England (Andy Nisbet*, Kathy Gill, Oliver Grafton, Andy Jefferies)
• Natural Resources Wales (Dylan Lloyd, Alun Attwood*)
• NatureScot - formerly Scottish Natural Heritage (Alan Cameron)
• NERC British Geological Survey (Patrick Bell)
• Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Peter Pollard)
• UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (Jodey Peyton)
• UK Environmental Observation Framework (Michael Pocock, Don Monteith*, Hannah Risser)

Note: Names followed by an asterisk* indicate corresponding members of the group.