Validating maps of land cover and land degradation with citizen science and mobile gaming

Peatland comprises around 24% of South Sumatra, a province on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Following catastrophic fires in 2015, peat restoration has become a priority for this area. To identify candidate areas for restoration, both land cover over time and land degradation have been mapped using optical and radar remote sensing. Limited field data have been used to help validate these maps but more validation data are still needed. One way to fill this gap is to tap into the power of citizen science, which has become an emerging area of interest. In citizen science, any member of the public can take part in scientific research, whether this is through data collection, analysis of the data or hypothesis generation. Here we present the results from a citizen science campaign using the Urundata mobile gaming application, which has been developed as part of the Restore+ project. Urundata has two main components: a rapid image assessment tool that allows users to classify satellite imagery by the type of land cover/land use visible or to examine pairs of images for detection of change over time (developed from an application called Picture Pile). The second component sends users to specific locations on the ground via a mobile device and asks for information related to land cover and evidence of land degradation (developed from an application called FotoQuest Go). Together these two components have been used to help validate land cover and land degradation maps of South Sumatra through citizen science.