Worldwide many terrestrial vertebrate populations are declining due to several reasons. Among them are habitat loss, climate change, illegal hunting and roads. The influences of roads on animal biodiversity are manifold, ranging from various pollutions to the most direct impact of
Worldwide many terrestrial vertebrate populations are declining due to several reasons. Among them are habitat loss, climate change, illegal hunting and roads. The influences of roads on animal biodiversity are manifold, ranging from various pollutions to the most direct impact of road-kill. Our new research article focuses on the effects of land-cover on road-killed amphibians and reptiles and the feasibility of a large scale citizen science approach to elucidate underlying patterns and interactions.
Citizen science is the active participation of laymen/amateurs in scientific projects. Currently a discussion is going on regarding the terminology in citizen science. What is ‘citizen science’, who is a ‘citizen’ and who is allowed to do ‘science’. However, the participation of amateurs in scientific projects has many benefits, including the collection of data on different objects covering a wide geographic area, and at the same time it raises awareness for a specific topic.
The overall goal of our citizen science project called Roadkill is to get an overview of numbers and patterns of road-killed vertebrates. In the last 3 years over 500 participants collected data of more than 5000 road-kills all over the world with a focus on Austria. The workload of the project is completely covered by volunteers (professional scientists and amateurs), ranging from website and app development to