Citizen science (the involvement of the public in scientific processes) is gaining momentum in one discipline after another, thereby more and more data on biodiversity, earthquakes, weather, climate, health issues among others are being collected at different scales that can extend the frontiers of knowledge. Successful citizen observatories can potentially be scaled up in order to contribute to larger environmental and policy strategies and actions (such as the European Earth Observation monitoring systems) and to be integrated in GEOSS and Copernicus. Making credible contributions to science can empower citizens to actively participate in environmental decision making, can raise awareness about environmental issues and can help build more resilient societies.
In many cases citizen science datasets contain huge amounts of data points collected by various stakeholders. There is definitely power in numbers of data points; however, the full potential of these datasets is not realized yet. Traditional statistics often fail to utilize these prospects. Statistics for Big Data can unveil hidden patterns that otherwise would not be visible in datasets. Since Big Data approaches and citizen science are still developing fields, most projects miss Big Data analyses. There is also a need to ensure that the data collected and analyzed by citizen scientists is held to the same standards as more traditional research projects, and equally to challenge and eventually adopt best practices for how such research is performed. There is an information gap for researchers looking to begin new projects or to discover and re-use previously collected citizen science data. This session seeks to close that gap by highlighting best practices in the collection, quality control and management of citizen science data to support rigorous Earth System investigations.
In this session we are looking for successful approaches of working with citizen science and Big Data for Earth systems research and applications. We want to ask and find answers to the following questions:

How to handle citizen science data?
How to ensure data quality?
Which Big Data approaches can be used in citizen science?
What are the biggest challenges and how to overcome them?
How to involve citizen scientists in Big Data analyses, or is it possible?
How to ensure transparency in project results and analyses?

This session aims to reach a wide audience, including current Earth System citizen science practitioners as well as researchers who are new to citizen science. In doing so, this session will facilitate communication among different audiences and approaches.