Q&A: Deja Perkins on Closing the Gaps in Participatory Science Data

May 20, 2024

Deja Perkins is a third-year PhD student in the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University, as well the owner of Naturally Wild LLC and a co-organizer of Black Birders Week. She spoke to BirdNote about her PhD research on participatory science datasets such as the popular bird observation project eBird, and how a lack of diversity in volunteer data collectors leads to gaps in our knowledge about bird diversity.

BirdNote: Can you explain what participatory science is?

Deja Perkins: Participatory science is any type of dataset that uses contributions from the public. There are a lot of different types of datasets and projects that use publicly generated data in science. They can be institutionally driven, like many citizen science projects. They can be community-driven and organized through grassroots organizations, where people identify local issues in their community and want to organize and collect data to help push for local policy changes. They can have very minimal involvement where the public is just collecting data for the project organizers, or they can be collaborative where the public is involved in multiple stages of the project including steering the research questions. Examples of contributory projects are eBird and iNaturalist, where you're just going out and collecting data, but you don't necessarily have any say in the goals of the project, the analysis, or how that data gets used.

Participatory datasets can cover a wide variety of science disciplines. There are projects that look at the weather and where people can contribute their precipitation observations. There are projects that look at climate change, trash, and plastic pollution. There are projects in which people monitor their stream activity. And then there are projects like eBird that tap into an existing community of people who care (like birders) to contribute their bird observations so that scientists like me can use that data to understand bird patterns, movements, and create a better idea of where conservation is needed.

BirdNote: How did you choose your PhD project? How did you become interested in data gaps in participatory science datasets?

Deja Perkins: My background is in natural resources and urban ecology. I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, in the city, and I noticed that wildlife was different depending on the neighborhood. During my master's program, I started working with the Triangle Bird Count, a citizen science project based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, to do bird surveys and see how bird diversity changed across different neighborhoods. We found that bird diversity was different depending on the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood. For my PhD, I decided to pursue geospatial analytics to take a bird's eye view and make maps to see how bird diversity changes on a smaller scale like across cities, and how bird observations and other types of participatory datasets change depending on who is participating.

BirdNote: What have you learned so far in the course of your research?

Deja Perkins: In my research, I am looking at conservation-related datasets that include bird observations, general wildlife diversity, as well as water and precipitation data. With our bird, water, and wildlife diversity datasets, we have found that where we get data from really depends on who is participating in those projects.

A lot of the time, we're taught as scientists that our data and science is unbiased, but that's simply not true. Our results can have bias depending on who is participating and who is collecting that data. Projects like eBird and iNaturalist allow participants to have a lot of choice in where they go to participate, and what time they go to collect the data. If you're participating in something like eBird, you can participate in the morning, at night, close to home, or on vacation. What we're finding is that, because birdwatchers are predominantly white and affluent, and because we have biases where people collect data on the weekends, in parks, and close to home, a lot of the data we're collecting is in predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods.

When we map the data, we can see that we have gaps in where people are going to participate. Therefore we have gaps in what we know about the diversity of birds in many low-income and high-minority areas. This is really important because we want to make sure that the conclusions we're able to draw about this data are representative of the actual landscape and the people that make up the places where birds live.

Just because we don't have data on an area does not mean that birds do not exist in that area. We must get a wide variety of people involved in not only bird watching, but also in reporting the data so that we have a better understanding of where birds actually are on the landscape, what areas they use, what areas may be important for migration, what areas may need additional conservation funds, and even where we might be able to input more green spaces for not only birds but also people.

BirdNote: How might the gaps in participatory science data cause problems for scientists trying to study patterns in bird diversity where people live?

Deja Perkins: We need information about birds in different areas so that we know what areas that birds are using. And so if we think that birds are only occurring in these very lush environments, we are missing opportunities to conserve birds that live in other urban landscapes. You may think that vacant lots or areas without a lot of green space may not have birds, but they may have birds, we just aren't recording them.

This isn't just important for the birds that live there, but also for the people that reside there, because we can use conservation funds to create better habitats for birds. Good habitat for birds are spaces that are also better for people — healthy greenspaces are great areas for people to get mental relief, physical activity, and other ecosystem services.

The quality and types of greenspaces differ depending on the socioeconomic status of the community, and depending on the quality and type of the habitat, you may not be able to support the same types of bird species. Thinking about a park that has trail system versus a park that is just a field used for sports, those two types of places support different types and amounts of birds. We can think about a neighborhood that has a lot of tree cover, versus a neighborhood that doesn't have a lot of tree cover and will see that different species of birds, if any, are supported in those two spaces. We should make sure that when we're thinking about how to develop in urban areas, we're also taking into consideration building landscapes and spaces that are not just beneficial for people, but also beneficial for nature and birds.

When you have a neighborhood that doesn't have a lot of tree cover or vegetative diversity, you also have issues like urban heat island effect, a decrease in bird diversity, and issues for both people and birds. And so it's really important that we think about urban landscapes holistically because these spaces are important to us — not just now, but also for the future.

BirdNote: How can we work towards closing the gaps in participatory science data and making sure that more people can participate?

Deja Perkins: This is a problem that requires a few different steps. Over the past few years with Black Birders Week, we've seen an increase in Black folks going out birding. In the pandemic, we've seen an increase of people, in general, going out birding and picking up that as a hobby or an activity. But one thing that we're not really seeing is this translating over to the bird reporting space and an increase in data contribution.

One thing that we can do is make sure organizations that support getting people involved in recreational birding are supporting a diversity of users. We have to think about how we frame why people should go out birding, the benefits it provides, not only to people, but also to science. We really have to address the fact that a lot of bird clubs and organizations are not very diverse, and they don't have a membership that supports diversity.

When people feel excluded from a space or people feel like they can't identify with the existing membership, or can't identify with the terminology of being a birder or birdwatcher, it's because they feel like they can't hold up some standard of being competitive, or going out and chasing rarities, or all of these, different qualities that they think are what makes a birdwatcher. But in reality, the only thing that really makes a birder is somebody that is intentionally observing birds. And so that can be while you walk in your neighborhood. That can be in your backyard. That can be when you go on vacation, or when you're on your daily commute because birds are pretty much everywhere. If you feel the space or community doesn't exist for you to go birding with people who look like you, create your own. Go out with your friends or family.

BirdNote: Are there ways that eBird participants can change the way they observe birds to make their contributions more useful to scientists and to close the gaps in the dataset?

Deja Perkins: Yes — currently, the way the eBird model works, it pushes people towards hotspots. On the one hand, that's a great strategy, because it allows you to see where other people are seeing birds. So if you know there are specific things you want to see or you want to try and get as many birds as possible, people tend to go to hotspots.

However, there are birds in other locations, and if we are pushing people towards birding at hotspots, then we're lacking information on other locations that might be new potential hotspots or other areas that have great diversity. We just don't know because people aren't reporting there.

Part of it is about being more intentional and mindful in our everyday practices. One great thing about eBird is that it allows an opportunity for people to keep track of their personal bird lists. And so if you kind of shift your thinking from, ‘oh, I'm just doing this activity just for myself,’ and shift to thinking of the community and that you're doing this activity for everyone to benefit from it, then it goes from just being a practice for your own mindfulness, to a practice for community wellness.

I think we need to put more emphasis on birding in our neighborhoods and being more aware of how bird diversity changes throughout the seasons. I think it's really cool how, since I've been a birder and birding my neighborhood, now I can identify when a certain bird arrives and know that it represents a changing of the seasons. Or if I see that the Dark-eyed Juncos are arriving a little bit earlier or leaving a little bit later than they were in previous years, I know that the climate is changing.

It's really cool to be able to track those changes in your neighborhood, an added benefit when you record and track in eBird, those changes in bird diversity are also helpful for science. It’s important to try and make this part of your daily life. If you are walking your dog in the morning, maybe you can also listen for birds or use the Merlin Bird ID app to see what birds are singing. Or if you can ID birds confidently, maybe you can record the birds on eBird while walking your dog or sitting on your porch and having your morning coffee or tea. That’s one way to have this collective effort to see how the climate is changing and how the birds are being impacted. At the same time it can help us think about how we are being impacted by those changes as well.

I think the main thing is to be open to going birding in spaces outside of parks, like places in your neighborhood to become more aware of what's going on in your community. The birds can help alert you to different types of changes, whether it’s changes in climate, or pollution in your neighborhood. Birds, and wildlife in general, are more sensitive to environmental changes before we as people might notice those changes. So if we pay attention to the birds in our neighborhoods and the birds in our areas, then we can help do so much more for science — just by paying attention.

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