Can citizen science assist digital soil mapping?

The essential element of citizen science is the participation of non-specialists in scientific research. The citizen acts as an observer or experimenter within structures established by a project run by professional scientists.The recent explosion in projects is due to the development of enabling technology, exemplified by the spatially-enabled “smart ” phone with mapping applications and its supporting networks including the GPS sys-tem. Citizen science projects have two purposes: (1) to amplify scientifi c research; and…