Investigating the response of rocky shores to global changes with citizen science: bioindication at the interface of science and society – ESPOIRS

At the interface between terrestrial and marine ecosystems, rocky shores are rich and productive ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services and are particularly attractive to human societies. Biodiversity and ecosystem services associated with rocky shores are currently impacted by several global change factors. To understand these impacts, it is essential to document long-term changes on rocky shores. Citizen science programmes offer an opportunity to do this over large spatial areas. These programmes respond to a twofold scientific (documenting the trajectories of rocky shores in response to global changes) and a societal problem (involving participants, their knowledge and questions in the co-construction of how to interpret the observed changes). Our project proposal is based on the “Algues Brunes and Bigorneaux” (namely, brown algae and periwinkles) Observatory of the BioLit citizen science programme. Over the past 11 years, it has collected more than 70,000 data on 32 shores (with 24 partner structures and 280 observers). Our proposal is to develop solutions to transform this observatory to document, in the long term, the impacts of two global change factors (pollution and climate change) on macroalgal and mollusc communities on rocky foreshores, focusing on the pilot region of Brittany. This is an interdisciplinary project that aims to co-construct shared knowledge between the scientific community and civil society through the formulation of "citizen bioindicators", a new concept of bioindication at the science-society interface. The sociological work package, through working groups, will ensure the science-society dialogue and will synthesise it to formalise the hybridisation of knowledge. The work package “response of rocky foreshores to global changes” will seek solutions to strengthen the capacity of the ABB programme to detect the effects of eutrophication and develop the capacity of this program to detect the effects of climate change. More specifically, the work on this ecological package will consist of building-programming the allocation of sampling effort to better detect the effects of pollution and climate change, and setting up hypotheses on the expected changes to be observed using predictive modelling approaches. Finally, drawing on the results of the sociological and ecological work packages, a third work package will aim to develop science-society transfer tools to exchange knowledge productions, make them accessible and allow them to be questioned by non-specialist audiences while remaining intelligible. This work package will aim to provide an indication of the health of rocky shores through a bioindication approach that questions both the participants' and the science's viewpoints, which will be formalised by the development of interactive online bioindication tools, accessible to all. The animation of the project will be ensured by a transversal work package dedicated to both the mobilisation of citizens and associative partners and to the scientific animation of the project. This project ESPOIRS (French word for “HOPES”) promises major scientific and societal benefits, making it possible to remove prominent scientific barriers (documenting the impacts of global changes over the long term), to respond to society's questions about the reality of ongoing global changes, and to enrich and then disseminate the lessons learned about the capacity of citizen science to retain observers.