Resource Library
A curated collection of high-quality resources about all aspects of community science. The resources come from
(people doing community science) or (people like you) and have been reviewed by editors.
| Link | Summary | Categories | hf:doc_categories |
|---|---|---|---|
| This document reflects over a year of dedicated community work by Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services and RiverWise, with support from New Sun Rising. It explores the implications of Executive Order 14008 and the Justice 40 Initiative, highlighting their transformative potential for disadvantaged communities. The guide emphasizes the need for genuine community engagement and cautions against oversimplified solutions, recognizing the inherent complexity of effective community benefits planning. Key principles include balancing urgency with care, understanding the limits of community benefits plans, and acknowledging potential unintended consequences. The document aims to provide actionable insights for stakeholders, inviting corporate and governmental entities … | Guide | guide | |
| A free online citizen science platform developed by the Community Lab at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Anecdata is used by hundreds of individuals and organizations to gather and access citizen science observations and provides a platform to easily collect, manage, and share their citizen science data. | Applications, Tools and Software | apps | |
| Civic engagement and policymaking, when practiced through a Community Science lens, can improve the quality and sustainability of policy-related decisions, ensure those decisions center community priorities, and build the capacity of all interested parties to advance their goals, address problems, redress inequities, and plan for future challenges. This toolkit from ASTC serves as a guide for organizations to thoughtfully identify and implement ways to nurture civic experiences across their work or deepen ongoing civic initiatives for meaningful change within their communities. | Guide | guide | |
| Through Dialogue & Deliberation, individuals and organizations can delve into real issues impacting their communities and deepen mutual understanding to facilitate the development of collaborative solutions. This set of tools from ASTC helps to dig into issues at the intersection of science and society, providing guidance on bringing together groups of people who share common interests and goals. These resources will guide you through foundational questions and considerations for planning Dialogue & Deliberation initiatives on topics relevant to local communities. | Guide | guide | |
| Summary of online discussion with links to Community-Based Research Canada. June 25, 2021 | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks | |
| The Building Resilient Communities Project: A National Symposium that Explores the Role of Public Libraries and Community-Based Organizations in Addressing Local Climate Impacts was funded by the National Science Foundation (you can view award information on the informalscience.org site HERE). The lead organization was the Space Science Institute; partner organizations included OCLC WebJunction, University of North Carolina Greensboro, and Interactive Learning Dynamics. Building Resilient Communities is a project of the STAR Library Education Network (STAR Net). The key component of the Building Resilient Communities Project was the 2024 Climate Action Symposium that brought together national, state, and local experts working … | Resource | resource | |
| A partnership between NASA DEVELOP, the City of Cambridge Community Development Department, and American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange. | Participatory Models | models | |
| A range of training options and accessible resources to support scientific community professionals and organizations working with, or funding, scientific communities. | Training Resources | training | |
| We would like to share our project and the implementation process in three cities in northern Kentucky as a case study that others may find useful to mimic or learn from. Citation: Robles, Z., et al. (2025), Climate Safe Neighborhoods: A community collaboration for a more climate-resilient future, Community Science Exchange, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024CSE000101. Published 7 February 2025. | Report | report | |
| A handbook for environmental educators working in communities, written by the North American Association of Environmental Educators. | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks | |
| A web-based, multimedia product that synthesizes best practices and lessons learned on the use of Earth science information for decision-making. | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks | |
| Earthwise Aware is an action-driven nature conservation organization that engages through co-creative citizen science and direct experiences, cultivates ecological science, ethics, and leadership, and reconciles environmental attitude, knowledge, and behavior. Earthwise Aware brings practical ethics to the forefront of nature and wildlife conservation, cultivates ecological awareness and literacy, bridges the gaps between the public, conservationists, and scientists, and connects people with nature through direct experiences. | Interactive Websites | websites | |
| This study expands on prior work to outline an ethical framework to guide research co-created with local communities. | |||
| A blog by Shannon Dosemagen. | Histories and Depictions | histories-and-depictions | |
| The Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute is a science and education based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose goal is to document Florida’s springs and educate the public about the threats that face them in order to ensure future generations can enjoy them. The mission of the Florida Springs Institute is to provide a focal point for improving the understanding of springs ecology and to foster the development of science-based education and management actions needed to restore and protect springs throughout Florida. | Interactive Websites | websites | |
| A multi-disciplinary collaboration led by Nurture Nature Center to engage youth and community to increase knowledge of weather and climate science, the risks from local hazards, and strategies for hazard mitigation, while storytelling and co-creating a vision for community resilience. | CSE Art/Science Interface | art-science | |
| This one-pager is a based on a report: Timm, K., Akerlof, K., et al. (2024). Perspectives on Equitable Co-Production: Workshop Report. University of Alaska Fairbanks & George Mason University. These materials are being submitted in conjunction with the special issue of Community Science on equitable co-production. National Science Foundation (NSF) Award Abstract #2135538, “EAGER: Equity in Scientific Co-Production Processes: Creation of a Framework”. This is being submitted in conjunction with the special issue of Community Science on equitable co-production. They are associated with the CSJ paper “What Does Equitable Co-Production Entail: three perspectives”. The link to the Community Science Journal … | General | general | |
| The Sapelli project aims to enable people with no or limited literacy – in the strict and broader technological sense – to use smartphones and tablets to collect, share, and analyse (spatial) data. There are two major strands to this work, both of which are covered in these tutorials: the use of the Sapelli software itself and the process that is followed to develop Sapelli projects within communities. Sapelli is open-source and is used in a variety of projects related to environmental monitoring. It enables communities, regardless of social and geographical background, to map their environment and any threats it … | |||
| Independent Community-Based Organization Working Agreements based on the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. An expression of the NOISE project’s fundamental commitment to working in a collaborative, fully inclusive, just, open, and respectful way. | Templates | templates | |
| A user-friendly portal that is bundled with 18 Earth observations in which the visualizations are categorized in the form of Earth Indicators, Natural Hazards, Environmental Threats, Ecosystem Health and Monitoring Climate, and is intended for users who want to search, view, explore, analyze, and share the tools and resources from one common platform instead of training themselves from various other websites. | Participatory Models, Templates | models templates | |
| A workbook for community leaders, educators, and advocates working with science institutions. | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks | |
| The Reservoir Assessment Tool (RAT) is a scalable and open source tool for satellite-based monitoring of reservoirs. The objective of RAT tool is to mobilize and empower communities around the world that need to make decisions based on surface water availability that is being increasingly regulated by upstream reservoirs. In today’s world almost all rivers are regulated by reservoirs and most communities living by the river depend on surface water that is controlled by dams and reservoirs. RAT provides real time update as well as historical operation of reservoirs in terms of how much water is being stored or released … | |||
| OpenAQ is a nonprofit organization providing universal access to air quality data to empower a global community of changemakers to solve air inequality—the unequal access to clean air. | Applications, Tools and Software | apps | |
| Through pilots, workshops, research, and narrative building, Open Environmental Data Project works to [re]build trust between communities, government, civil society, and science. OEDP articulates improved processes within current environmental governance, while also envisioning generative environmental futures — leading to the goal of healthier communities, robust natural systems, and collective action paired with matching policy levers. | Interactive Websites | websites | |
| A system dynamics (SD) model of the HIV Care Continuum designed to simulate HIV “treatment as prevention” to help eliminate the epidemic. | Participatory Models | models | |
| A workbook for informal science educators and outreach specialists working with diverse communities. | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks | |
| The report titled “Perspectives on Equitable Co-Production” summarizes the findings and discussions from a workshop held in May 2022, which was part of a National Science Foundation-funded project. The project’s goal was to understand how equity is perceived in co-production processes within federally funded climate change programs and to develop a framework for equitable co-production. The workshop involved participants from various sectors, including research, government, non-governmental organizations, and community representatives. The discussions focused on three perspectives of equitable co-production: Ways of Knowing & Power, Participants & Interactions, and Science as Capacity Building. Each perspective highlighted different aspects of equity, such … | |||
| A report focusing on the air quality of the City of Philadelphia, as presented by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, Air Management Services, the local air pollution control agency for the City of Philadelphia. | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| A paper by students and staff from the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at the University of Minnesota describing their efforts to increase department engagement with the community, specifically those traditionally marginalized in the geosciences. | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| An inclusive and innovative International Conference bringing together communities, scholars, and policymakers presenting research findings from Indigenous and rural societies in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, as well as the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and Oneida Lake Watershed in the United States of America. | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| Indigenous Knowledge, Science, And Thriving Together In A Changing Climate: A collaborative research project with the Sary Mogul, Alai Valley community (Kyrgyzstan). | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| Indigenous Knowledge, Science, And Thriving Together In A Changing Climate: A collaborative research project with the Oneida Lake Watershed community (USA). | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| Indigenous Knowledge, Science, And Thriving Together In A Changing Climate: A collaborative research project with the Standing Rock Sioux Nation (USA). | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| Indigenous Knowledge, Science, And Thriving Together In A Changing Climate: A collaborative research project with the Roshorv & Savnob, Bartang Valley community (Tajikistan). | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| Save South Boulder is a citizen-powered advocacy non-profit group based in Boulder, Colorado that advocates for flood mitigation for the South Boulder Creek floodplain. They support comprehensive floodplain management with 500-year flood mitigation that uses structural and non-structural solutions. | Interactive Websites | websites | |
| Soilhealth.app is a web app that offers a questioning and reporting framework to support locally driven, participatory projects carried out by groups that are learning to monitor and manage wholes such as watershed function, soil health, and local economics. A project of the Soil Carbon Coalition, it offers a guide to learn how to work with the most powerful planetary force: coupled carbon and water cycling. It is meant to manage what groups want and need based on biophysical feedback, rather than manage against what they don’t want. The App was developed by Peter Donovan, who has a background in … | Data Sets | data-sets | |
| Training for Community Science Fellows. | Training Resources | training | |
| Interactive graphs and maps showing past and projected climate conditions for counties and county-equivalents across the United States. Built to support the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit, the tool helps people explore projected future climate conditions that may put people, property, and other assets at risk. | Applications, Tools and Software | apps | |
| An evaluation of the Thriving Earth Exchange program conducted in 2019. | Training Resources | training | |
| a U.S. government-owned website designed to help people find and use tools, information, and subject matter expertise to build climate resilience. The Toolkit offers information from all across the U.S. federal government in one easy-to-use location. | Interactive Websites | websites | |
| An online toolkit of five basic process steps for planning, designing, and carrying out a crowdsourcing or citizen science project. It also contains case studies, models, and other resources, including success stories and challenges that others have faced in projects. | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks | |
| Columbus Community Bill of Rights group members, with the training and guidance of a group of scientists, tested the surface water near oil & gas Class II injection wells in the Columbus, Ohio area watershed on a biweekly basis for one year. The motivation of the project was to test for possible contamination, provide baseline data, and present the results to the Columbus Water department to advocate for water monitoring closer to these sources of potential contamination. | Report | report | |
| A suite of engineering case studies that showcase how the water sector is applying climate adaptation in practice, by using climate change information in engineering design and project delivery processes. | Case Studies | local-studies | |
| This one-pager describes the primary findings from Akerlof, K., Timm, K., et al. (2023). What Does Equitable Co‐Production Entail? Three Perspectives. Community Science, (2), e2022CSJ000021. National Science Foundation (NSF) Award Abstract #2135538, EAGER: Equity in Scientific Co-Production Processes: Creation of a Framework. This is being submitted in conjunction with the special issue of Community Science on equitable co-production. They are associated with the CSJ paper “What Does Equitable Co-Production Entail: three perspectives”. The link to the Community Science Journal paper is the following: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022CSJ000021 | General | general | |
| Robert Wood Johnson Foundation summary of what investigators have learned through their community engaged research for action program. | Handbooks, Guidelines and Best Practices | handbooks |