Publications
On this page we present all our scientific publications and activities on conferences.
For the first time, we were able to write a scientific article together with a citizen scientist in the Roadkill project. Susanne Lutter came up with the idea for the question, monitored a route for two years and then supported us in writing the article. A really exciting experience for everyone involved, which we would like to repeat. Abstract: An important factor in the decline of global animal diversity is road traffic, where many animals are killed. This study aimed to collect data on vertebrate roadkill in the city of Vienna, Austria, between 2017 and 2022 using three different approaches: citizen science, systematic monitoring by bicycle along a 15 km route, and systematic monitoring on foot along a 3 km route. During 359 monitoring events, only four roadkill incidences (three Erinaceus sp., one Rattus sp.) were found by bicycle or on foot. At the same time citizen scientists reported 1 roadkill squirrel on the bicycle route and 84 roadkill incidences for the entire city area. Hedgehogs and urban birds were commonly reported species by citizen scientists. Although no amphibian or reptile roadkill was found during systematic monitoring, they were reported by citizen scientists. The low number of roadkill incidences found suggests a potentially low…
From 3 - 6 April 2024, the European and Austrian Citizen Science Double Conference took place at BOKU University in Vienna. More than 500 participants came together under the motto "Change". Change can be seen as positive by one group and negative by another. Consequently, different perspectives on a particular change can lead to completely different conclusions. The aim of the conference was to explore these different approaches to the topic of "change" from a wide range of perspectives in the field of citizen science and participatory research. The aim was to discuss both the active, transformative change initiated by citizen science as well as the observation of change identified by citizen science in various disciplines and by various interest groups. In addition, the potential of citizen science as a changemaker in research and society should be emphasised. Four submissions from the Roadkill project were accepted by the Conference Programme Committee and we were able to present a talk and two posters at the conference as well as a market stand at the Citizen Science Day at the Natural History Museum Vienna. We have uploaded both posters (in German) to Zenodo for easy reading. Poster 1: Regelmäßiges Monitoring vs. Zufallsmeldungen in…
Abstract of the article: Data on road-killed animals is essential for assessing the impact of roads on biodiversity. In most European countries data on road-killed huntable wildlife exists, but data on other vertebrate species (e.g. amphibians, reptiles, small mammals) is scarce. Therefore, we conducted a citizen science project on road-killed vertebrates as a useful supplement to data on huntable wildlife collected by public authorities. The dataset contains 15198 reports with 17163 individual road-killed vertebrates collected by 912 participants. The reports were made in 44 countries, but the majority of data was reported in Austria. We implemented a data validation routine which led to three quality levels. Reports in quality level 1 are published via GBIF, reports in quality level 2 via Zenodo and reports in quality level 3 were deleted. The dataset is relevant for the scientific community studying impacts of roads on fauna as well as for those who are responsible for road planning and implementing mitigation measures. More on this also in our blog (in German): https://www.citizen-science.at/blog/wie-werden-roadkill-meldungen-erhoben-und-kontrolliert-ein-neuer-fachartikel You can find the full text of the original article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01599-6
"Global - Regional - Local: with Citizen Science for the UN Sustainable Development Goals" - this was the motto of the Forum Citizen Science 2022, which was organised by Bürger schaffen Wissen in cooperation with Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences in Sankt Augustin on 12 and 13 May 2022. We presented our engagement of the past seven years in the animal group of amphibians in a poster at this conference:
The "Engaging Citizen Science Conference" took place at Aarhus University from 25-26 April 2022, opening the international Citizen Science conference series. We were also present and reported there in the form of a poster from our latest paper on the decline in roadkill reports during the first COVID 19 lockdown:
The first coronalockdown in spring 2020 also affected the roadkill project, as our just published paper in the journal PeerJ shows. In particular, roadkills of those animals that became active again after hibernation were reported significantly less than in previous years. But is this because fewer animals were actually roadkilled, or because of the reduced mobility of citizen scientists in the project? To find out, we did a survey of the Austrian citizen scientists in the project and found that a majority of respondents said they felt they had reported fewer roadkills, whether or not their mobility behavior had changed during the lockdown. Combined with traffic data from other sources, the results suggest that perhaps fewer animals were actually hit. What is quite certain, however, is that citizen science projects in general, when analyzing data from this period, need to be aware that the lockdown may have had a significant impact on their data in some cases, and this needs to be taken into account when interpreting it. Background The global COVID-19 pandemic is affecting human activities and lives as never before in our lifetime. To avoid the unnecessary deaths of thousands of people due to the excessive demands on…
Every year, thousands of amphibians are killed on Austria's roads. Amphibian protection measures are widely available, but need to be installed in time for migration. The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG), the Austrian Society for Nature Conservation and the Natural History Museum Vienna set the goal to better predict the start of amphibian migrations. The analysis of more than 11,500 observations over 18 years shows that the flowering dates of apricot and goat willow are good predictors of amphibian migration and can thus provide the starting signal for conservation measures. Predicting amphibian migration - why is it important? In order to mitigate the danger of roads for amphibians during their seasonal migration, temporary protection measures are used in Austria in addition to permanent facilities (so-called amphibian tunnels). For this purpose, protective fences are usually erected by volunteers along particularly endangered road sections and checked every day to see if there are any animals on site. Each animal is carried across the road by hand and released there. The challenge here is that the amphibian migration is weather-dependent and starts at different times each year, and the fences must…
Together with colleagues from the USA, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Great Britain and Canada we looked at 15 different roadkill projects and compared them with each other. The idea behind it was not of a purely academic nature, but was very practical. We wanted to find out how the different projects work, who can take part, what data is collected and what consequences result from it. Based on the results, we would like to try whether it would be possible to link all these projects together to create a global roadkill reporting system. Such an approach would make it possible to show even more clearly the impact of road traffic on biodiversity. If you would like to know more about the recommendations that have been developed for similar projects and how the projects developed for public authorities or for road maintenance companies differ, you are welcome to read the original article that we have linked at the end of the blog. Abstract: Globally, wildlife-vehicle conflict (WVC) fragments wildlife populations (due to road/traffic-aversion), kills and injures individual animals, can cause wildlife population declines, may eventually contribute to local or total extinction of certain species, and can harm vehicles and…
Recently a new peer-review article on our project was published. Together with colleagues from Belgium, the Czech Republic and the UK, an article was written about the benefits and challenges of working with volunteers in roadkill projects. In 4 projects we worked with very different groups. The complete article is of course freely available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1617138119303449 The abstract: Daily, a large number of animals are killed on European roads due to collisions with vehicles. A high proportion of these events, however, are not documented, as those obliged to collect such data, only record a small proportion; the police only register collisions that lead to traffic accidents, and hunters only collect data on game wildlife. Such reports disproportionately under-records small vertebrates such as birds, small mammals, amphibians and reptiles. In the last decade, however, national wildlife roadkill reporting systems have been launched, largely working with citizen scientists to collect roadkill data on a national basis that could fill this data gap. The aim of this study is, therefore, to describe for the first time, existing projects in Europe, and the user groups that submit data to them. To give a deeper understanding of such projects, we describe exemplar scientific roadkill reporting…
From 26th to 28th June 2019 we were with our project at the 5th Austrian Citizen Science Conference in Obergurgl/Tyrol. A great event of the Citizen Science Network Austria. The organizing committee consisted of representatives of the University of Innsbruck, the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna, the Center for Citizen Science at OEAD, Schweiz forscht (CH), Bürger schaffen Wissen (D) and Partizipative Wissenschaftsakademie at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. The participants and the scientific contributions were therefore correspondingly diverse. Representatives from universities, universities of applied sciences, associations, museums, funding organisations and many more came to exchange ideas across disciplines. We were at the event with a poster on data quality and gave an insight into Irene Hoppe's master thesis (in German):
On April 5th we had the opportunity to present a poster at the Austrian Academy of Sciences showing how our project can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Austrian Academy of Sciences organised the international symposium "Global Sustainable Development Goals in a Mediatized World" on 4 and 5 April 2019. Achieving the goals laid out in the Agenda 2030 in a mediatized world poses new challenges and opportunities for all stakeholders, including the scientific community. You can see the presented poster here:
At the beginning of February we were invited to the Austrian Citizen Science Conference 2018 in Salzburg to present our experiences with Citizen Science in a peer-review process. Specifically, it was to show how we, from the project Roadkill, have experienced the process of publishing in peer-reviewed journals.A short summary of the whole really exciting event can be found on Österreich forscht.In addition, on the third day of the conference, the so-called Aktionstag, we were able to present the Roadkill project to a very interested Salzburg audience at a market stand and show in practice how citizens can help in our project.For all interested in our experiences, you can see the poster presented here:
We published our third paper in the project in the Journal BMC Ecology yesterday (27 June 2017). The article is open access available, please visit the article webpage to read the fulltext: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2Fs12898-017-0134-z We would also be happy if you read and share our blog: http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/2017/07/07/using-citizen-science-to-monitor-road-kills/ To get an impression, here is our abstract: Background Amphibians and reptiles are among the most endangered vertebrate species worldwide. However, little is known how they are affected by road-kills on tertiary roads and whether the surrounding landscape structure can explain road-kill patterns. The aim of our study was to examine the applicability of open-access remote sensing data for a large-scale citizen science approach to describe spatial patterns of road-killed amphibians and reptiles on tertiary roads. Using a citizen science app we monitored road-kills of amphibians and reptiles along 97.5 km of tertiary roads covering agricultural, municipal and interurban roads as well as cycling paths in eastern Austria over two seasons. Surrounding landscape was assessed using open access land cover classes for the region (Coordination of Information on the Environment, CORINE). Hotspot analysis was performed using kernel density estimation (KDE+). Relations between land cover classes and amphibian and reptile road-kills were analysed with conditional probabilities…
The 10th Annual Meeting of the Macroecology Working Group for the Ecological Society Germany, Austria & Switzerland was held from 19-21 April 2017. This year, the titel of the conference was "Macroecology in Space and Time". Colleagues from the University of Vienna organised the conference with a broad focus on conservation biology, evolution and global change. We took the opportunity of living at the conference venue and presented a poster on our project and some new results.
Today (10th October 2016) we published a new paper in Remote Sensing with the title "Comparing Road-Kill Datasets from Hunters and Citizen Scientists in a Landscape Context". It is open access and therefore free for everyone to read: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/8/10/832/htm We really wish to thank all citizen scientists in Project Roadkill for investing time and reporting data. Here is the abstract of our published paper: Comparing Road-Kill Datasets from Hunters and Citizen Scientists in a Landscape Context Authors: Florian Heigl 1,*, Carina R. Stretz 1, Wolfgang Steiner 2, Franz Suppan 3, Thomas Bauer 3, Gregor Laaha 4 and Johann G. Zaller 1 1Institute of Zoology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna2Institute of Wildlife Biology and Game Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna3Institute of Surveying, Remote Sensing and Land Information, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna4Institute of Applied Statistics and Computing, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna Road traffic has severe effects on animals, especially when road-kills are involved. In many countries, official road-kill data are provided by hunters or police; there are also road-kill observations reported by citizen scientists. The aim of the current study was to test whether road-kill reports by…
From 30 August to 2 September, the IENE (Infra Eco Network Europe) conference took place in Lyon (France). Florian Heigl presented the project Roadkill as Citizen Science Project and first results. The IENE is a network of experts active in the field of ecology and linear transport infrastructure. This network is non-profit, non-governmental and non-political. The title of this year's event was "Integrating transport infrastructure with living landscapes" to highlight how much infrastructure, from roads to airports to power lines, is part of the landscape. On the conference website you can get very detailed information about the conference, the presentations, posters and workshops. The conference was characterized by topics such as "What do functioning green bridges look like", "What new technical developments are there in the field of wildlife accident prevention", "What influence do roads have on biodiversity" and many more. The difference to many other conferences is that here scientists, officials from ministries, engineers and company employees meet to discuss and learn from each other. The presented poster:
Poster presentation “Data quality in citizen science projects considering roadkills” by Florian Heigl, Daniel Dörler and Johann Zaller; 1. European Citizen Science Conference in Berlin, Germany; 19. - 21. May 2016. More information regarding the conference: http://www.ecsa2016.eu/ The presented poster:
Poster presentation “Citizen Science Project Roadkill – Connecting science, people and habitat fragmentation using European hare as a model organism” by Florian Heigl, Carina Stretz, Wolfgang Steiner, Thomas Bauer, Franz Suppan und Johann Zaller; 45th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in Göttingen, Germany; 31. August - 04. September 2015. Representatives of the Institute of Zoology at the GFÖ 2015. The presented poster:
In recent years citizen science is getting more important in professional science. More and more professional scientists are integrating citizens in their research. However what is citizen science and where does it come from? Which impact does citizen science have on the cooperation of laypersons and professionals? How do citizen science projects work and are there examples in Austria? Can we do something to promote citizen science in Austria and make it easier for laypersons? Florian Heigl and Daniel Dörler are answering these questions in German in the "Jahrbuch 2015 der Bildung für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung", which was published in June 2015. More Information regarding the Jahrbuch: https://www.umweltbildung.at/shop/bne-reloaded/
15th April 2015, Carina Stretz, master student at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna presented the poster Project Roadkill: Defining hotspots in European Hare vehicle collisions using datasets from citizen scientists and professionals at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2015. More than 11000 scientists are attending the EGU GA to talk about latest trends and findings in a variety of scientific fields. The presented poster:
We published our manuscript "Using a Citizen Science Approach in Higher Education: A Case Study Reporting Roadkills in Austria" von Florian Heigl und Johann Zaller; Fachzeitschrift Human Computation - Volume 1, Issue 2 (Citizen Science Special Issue); December 2014 Abstract: Using a Citizen Science Approach in Higher Education: A Case Study Reporting Roadkills in Austria FLORIAN HEIGL, Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien JOHANN G. ZALLER, Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien Citizen cyber-science as a crowdsourcing method is gaining popularity around the world especially in projects dealing with environmental issues. Many European universities are faced with increasing student numbers along with unchanged numbers of advising lecturers and professors. Thus, a challenge for natural science educators is to teach and transfer knowledge despite weak lecturer-to-student ratios. In search for a solution to this problem, we applied a citizen science crowdsourcing approach in an obligatory course of the Bachelor programme of Environment and Bio-Resources Management at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria. The project, called BOKUroadkill, engaged students in reporting roadkilled animals they observed during their daily routine over a period of three months. Data collection was carried out via a freely available, customized mobile app (EpiCollect) that ran on students’…
Poster presentation “Roadkill of European Hare in agricultural landscapes in Austria: citizen science vs. professional data.” via Florian Heigl, Wolfgang Steiner, Franz Suppan, Thomas Bauer and Johann Zaller; 44. Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in Hildesheim, Germany; 8.-12. September 2014 The presented poster:
