Abstract
UK’s trees, woods and forests are a vital national asset providing multiple economic, social and environmental benefits. The growing incidence of new tree pest and disease outbreaks has raised the need for effective support from a wide range of stakeholders. At the same time, citizen science (CS) has been advocated as a powerful research tool for undertaking environmental monitoring and scientific research and for engaging and collaborating with the general public. However, critical assessments of the contribution and relevance of CS projects in terms of policy, management and science have been largely missing in the tree health domain.
The seminar will report on the findings of research exploring the scope of citizen science in the tree health sector in the UK across tree health science, policy and management stakeholder groups. The seminar will shed light onto the stakeholder’s expectations from citizen science, and where they see the real challenges and opportunities for using a citizen science approach.
Speaker Bio
Nidhi is a research associate in the Centre for Environmental Policy. She was awarded her PhD “The views of experts and the public regarding societal preferences for innovation in nanotechnology” from Wageningen University, The Netherlands in 2013 and has a Master degree in Natural Resource Management from India. Committed to undertake social-science research to support science- policy-public interfaces, Nidhi has academic interests in areas of environment and society, including those areas which require interdisciplinary collaboration between the social and natural sciences.