Open AccessThe unrealized potential of community science to support research on the resilience of protected areas
Author(s) -
Binley Allison D.,
Proctor Caitlyn A.,
Pither Richard,
Davis Sierra A.,
Bennett Joseph R.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
conservation science and practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2578-4854
DOI - 10.1111/csp2.376
Subject(s) - community resilience , resilience (materials science) , environmental resource management , marine protected area , citizen science , protected area , psychological resilience , ecological resilience , ecosystem services , corporate governance , latent dirichlet allocation , environmental planning , computer science , resource (disambiguation) , geography , business , ecosystem , environmental science , ecology , topic model , psychology , natural language processing , psychotherapist , computer network , biology , habitat , thermodynamics , physics , botany , finance
To remain effective into the future, protected areas must be resilient to change. Evaluating the resilience of protected areas requires data across large spatial and temporal scales, which has proven to be a strength of community science in conservation research. Here, we assess the contributions of community science to different topics of protected area research and identify gaps where community science can be used more effectively. We performed a literature search aimed at capturing the research on resilient protected area design and management, then used Latent Dirichlet Allocation to model the topics represented in this corpus. Once topics were established, we searched for evidence of community science being used in each publication. Our analysis showed that there are five main areas of focus in resilient protected area research: biodiversity, climate change, connectivity, resources and ecosystem services, and social governance. We found limited evidence in the literature of community science directly assisting research in these areas. Community science has proven effective for extensive and cost‐effective data collection in other situations; therefore, we recommend ways in which conservation managers and researchers can incorporate community science in the design and management of resilient protected areas.