Ecological research increasingly relies on broad‐scale databases containing information collected by personnel from a variety of sources, including government agencies, universities, and citizen‐science programs. However, the contribution of citizen‐science programs to these databases is not well known. We analyzed one such database to quantify the contribution of citizen science to lake water‐quality data from seven US states. Citizen‐science programs not only provided over half of the observations for commonly sampled water‐quality measures (water clarity, nutrients, and algal biomass) from the past 31 years, but also contributed to the majority of long‐term monitoring (>15 years) for selected measures in lakes. While previous studies have demonstrated the usefulness of citizen science for research, management, policy, and public engagement, our study demonstrates that citizen science can also make valuable contributions to populating broad‐scale ecological databases. Strengthening partnerships between citizen‐science programs and monitoring agencies can help maintain and expand spatial and temporal data coverage during the “big data” era of ecology.

中文翻译：

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量化公民科学对广泛的生态数据库的贡献

生态研究越来越依赖于大规模数据库，该数据库包含由人员从各种来源收集的信息，这些来源包括政府机构，大学和公民科学计划。但是，尚不了解公民科学计划对这些数据库的贡献。我们分析了一个这样的数据库，以量化公民科学对来自美国七个州的湖泊水质数据的贡献。公民科学计划不仅提供了过去31年中通常采样的水质测量值（水的澄清度，养分和藻类生物量）的一半以上的观测值，而且为大多数长期监测（> 15年）做出了贡献）以选择湖泊中的措施。尽管先前的研究已经证明了公民科学对于研究，管理，政策和公众参与的有用性，我们的研究表明，公民科学也可以为建立广泛的生态数据库做出宝贵的贡献。在生态的“大数据”时代，加强公民科学计划与监测机构之间的伙伴关系可以帮助维持和扩大时空数据的覆盖范围。