CCS Marine Protected Areas
Building on ten years of support and partnerhip:
How can California sustain and improve the role of Community and Citizen Science in MPAs?
Together with our partners at the California Academy of Sciences, our MPAs team has submitted a public comment for the April 2023 meeting of the California Fish and Game Commission, urging the state to build on 10+ years of support and partnership, which brought more than 80,000 people into the process of marine protected area monitoring in California.
Project update: Community and citizen science in California’s Marine Protected Areas
Moving forward with our research and expanding into Oregon's Marine Reserve System
Since submitting our partner report for the Decadal Management Review of MPAs process, we have been working on a second phase of research to dive deeper into some of the dynamics and nuances of the relationships between the MPA Network and community and citizen science (CCS) programs.
New reports on Community and Citizen Science in California’s Marine Protected Areas
The Center’s analyses will inform the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Decadal Management Review of MPAs
Since Spring 2021, two project teams at the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science have been collecting and analyzing data related to the contributions of community and citizen science participants in coastal monitoring activities within and surrounding marine protected areas (MPAs) throughout the State of California.
New Book: Citizen Science for Coastal and Marine Conservation
Co-edited by Dr. John Cigliano and
our Faculty Director, Heidi Ballard, this new volume provides a
broad range of case studies exploring the utility and
feasibility, as well as limitations, of using marine and coastal
citizen science for conservation to leverage these resources and
address these tensions.
MPAs and Citizen Science in California
Citizen and Community Science plays a special role in efforts to conserve and manage California’s ocean and coastal resources. There is a huge diversity of projects and programming operating up and down the coast, which engage the public in science and monitoring, often with direct connections to policy and management processes.
