Publications
The EU-funded OTTERS project aims at scaling up successful citizen science (CS) initiatives in the marine and freshwater domains to foster literacy, agency, and care for water.
Among its objectives, the project developed Spring-to-Sea campaigns, clustering water-related CS initiatives, elevating and promoting them through organised co-creation sessions with multiple stakeholders.
A roadmap to integrate CS in formal education was also developed and validated through large-scale implementation in schools.
The fact sheet highlights that 98% of teachers believe the OTTERS project helped increase water literacy and care among students , and 86% were satisfied with the quality of the training materials. The pilot projects took place in Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Armenia.
Citizen science empowers schools, communities, and civil society to contribute to aquatic ecosystem management through participatory monitoring. But without standardised data collection and sharing, impact is limited.
The fact sheet identifies several challenges, including the lack of guidance on standardized approaches in many existing tools, the tendency for projects to create their own unique methods, and the frequent absence of metadata.
End users of citizen science can increase their impact and protect their contributions by being informed, selective, and strategic in their approach to using standardized methods.
Citizen science generates valuable environmental data, but reaching its full potential depends on making it interoperable, reusable, and integral. Technology developers play a key role in the facilitating data standardization by embedding standardised structures and exchange formats into citizen science tools.
This fact sheet focuses on the crucial role technology developers play in standardizing citizen science data. Standardisation is essential because without it, data remains isolated and underutilized. By embedding standardized structures and exchange formats into their tools, developers can ensure data is interoperable, reusable, and integral.
By implementing these standards, technology developers can ensure that citizen science data becomes scientifically credible, policy-relevant, and easily integrated into institutional and global research.
Citizen science is rapidly expanding as a key source of environmental data, but without standardisation, much of its potential remains untapped. Policymakers can unlock the value of citizen science by providing strategic support and developing the necessary infrastructure for data standardisation.
This fact sheet highlights how policymakers can improve citizen science. The document argues that while citizen science is a valuable and low-cost source of environmental data, its potential is often untapped due to a lack of standardization. Policymakers can address this by providing strategic support and infrastructure for data standardization, which would make local observations usable at a larger scale, including in policymaking.
By taking these steps, policymakers can enable citizen science to deliver cost-effective, real-time environmental insights, strengthen environmental governance with localized data, and boost public engagement.
The OTTERS Conference – Waves of Change: Changing Hearts and Minds Through Citizen Science was held on May 23-24, 2025, in Oeiras, Portugal, in collaboration with the Oeiras Valley Science Festival. The event broached topics such as citizen science, environmental education and civic engagement and brought together educators, researchers, policymakers, NGOs, and students in an effort to promote dialogue and collaboration in participatory water stewardship.
The Book of Abstracts from the conference is now available, compiling the diverse contributions presented at the conference, including participants’ oral presentations, posters, and workshop abstracts. This collection holds a broad spectrum of topics, such as citizen science in education (i.e. how participatory activities enhance learning), science education and civic engagement (i.e. how science learning can become more appealing through participation in local environmental protection initiatives), and sustainability and participatory action (i.e. how to engage diverse groups in sustainability actions).
This policy brief discusses the integration of citizen science (CS) into formal education, highlighting its potential to enhance learning and foster environmental stewardship.
The white paper presents findings from a study involving 333 teachers, which revealed that while citizen science offers significant educational benefits, its implementation is hindered by systemic barriers such as curriculum constraints, time limitations, and insufficient training.
The brief outlines a roadmap for integrating citizen science into formal education and provides policy recommendations to address these challenges and promote its effective adoption in schools.
The brief is based on the deliverable 4.1 – Roadmap towards integrating CS into school curricula and activities and creation of the OTTERS school hubs of the OTTERS project.
Riparian zones are dynamic ecosystems integral to watercourses,shaped by flooding regimes that create diverse habitats with uniquebiotic communities adapted to high water and nutrient availability. Riparian vegetation is indispensable for maintaining the health ofriverine ecosystems and surrounding landscapes. They regulatefloods, control sediments, filter pollutants, stabilize microclimates,support aquatic food chains, and enhance habitat diversity.
This white paper entitled: Citizen Science and Riparian Ecotone Management, explain How can citizen scientists contribute to managing and monitoring riparian vegetation and biodiversity. Detailed analyses of relevant international and national scientific literature and databases are included in the full report.
Citizen science offers a promising way to improve citizens’ awareness and aquatic literacy. It can also help to improve the quality of water quality data. By engaging in citizen science projects, individuals are more likely to adopt eco-friendly habits and become more engaged in their communities. Citizen science can also lead to better policies and environmental practices.
This technical brief explores the levers for a stronger collaboration between citizen science programmes and regulatory agencies to meet the goals of European and global water quality objectives, in particular WFD and SDG 6.3. The full report, including a thorough analysis of international and national scientific literature and databases.
This case study focuses on understanding the social values and perceptions of Israeli and Maltese societies towards their gelatinous neighbors, and the degrees of change due to the local citizen science initiative. Both countries are impacted by jellyfish presence throughout the year, but the increased reliance on the sea for recreation and marine resources has altered the types of human-animal interactions.
The outcomes of this study are important to the management of public health and well-being, decision-making processes in industries such as coastal tourism and nature protection, and raising awareness of the varying impacts of citizen science projects.
OTTERS partners from Israel have recently completed an analysis of long-term time series for all species of jellyfish on the Israeli beach and submitted the attached poster to the Israeli Association for Aquatic Science (IAAS) meeting to be held in Eilat, Israel, on December 4-5, 2024.
The research paper titled “Seasonality of Gelatinous Zooplankton in the Israeli Mediterranean” investigates the seasonal patterns of gelatinous zooplankton (GZ) in the Mediterranean Sea near Israel. The study analyzes data collected since 2011 to understand the abundance and diversity of these organisms.
Developing standards for citizen science in aquatic ecosystems
An OTTERS Project poster titled ‘Developing standards for citizen science in aquatic ecosystems’ was presented by Simona Cerrato from the ECSA – European Citizen Science Association on behalf of OTTERS on 30th November 2023 at the Forum Citizen Science conference in Freiburg, Germany.
The poster presents an overview of the OTTERS project and highlights its objectives to standardise citizen science in marine and freshwater. It was developed by Joe Jubb and Franziska Stressmann of ECSA, an OTTERS partner.
Supporting Fisheries Management by Promoting Citizen Science
OTTERS science researcher Dori Edelist from the University of Haifa, presented a poster titled Supporting Fisheries Management by Promoting Citizen Science, at the annual Fisheries Science Seminar in Brussels on June 30, 2023.
