Multidisciplinarity for biodiversity management on campus through citizen sciences

Abstract

This paper explores the means to investigate the biodiversity of multiple french campus. This is achieved by building multidisciplinary human relationships inside and between campus and between different researches laboratories. The “BiodiverCity” project, related to “Inventaire Fac'” and “neOCampus”, is encompassing expertise from several fields: informatic, social and environmental sciences as well as arts. It aims at harvesting data on biodiversity locations on several campus. This paper shows how this type of interdisciplinary cooperation can shape a citizen sciences projects. The presented case study is based on an Android mobile application named BiodiverCity that allows any campus user to notify the location of a contact with an animal or a plant on the campus territory along with its picture. This application is relayed by Inventaire Fac' in charge of the data validation, storage and communication. This case study is viewed as an opportunity to investigate why people care about their campus wildlife and flora, and to examine how does the generated critical material provides pertinent data for campus green area management and conservation.