Assessing citizen science data quality: an invasive species case study

An increase in the number of citizen science programs has prompted an examination of their ability to provide data of sufficient quality. We tested the ability of volunteers relative to professionals in identifying invasive plant species, mapping their distributions, and estimating their abundance within plots. We generally found that volunteers perform almost as well as professionals in some areas, but that we should be cautious about data quality in both groups. We analyzed predictors of..