Citizen science & soil connectivity: Where are we?

Abstract

A fifty-four per cent of the global population is estimated to live disconnected from the natural environment. Furthermore, a large majority of our community unknown how significant is the soil in their life, e.g. the provider of food, energy and medicine, etc. Strengthening this connection is one relevant action toward Soil Security, referred to as "Soil Connectivity". Citizen Science (CS) improves soil connectivity by increasing citizens awareness and making them collect scientific data. Unfortunately, an indicator of soil connectivity increases is difficult to estimate. Here, we provide a review of fifty-five soil CS initiatives worldwide to collect information such as experts' motivation for starting these projects, technologies being used, and participants' profiles. Our findings show three main trends that citizen soil initiatives tend to follow: those linking soil to human health (e.g. lead, food quality, antibiotics), those focused on future-proofing and education, and those focused on soil health (degradation) and productivity (agriculture). In addition, simplifying scientific technicalities and methods, maintaining communication with participants, and acknowledging contributions are critical factors in crowdsourcing soil research.