Tropentag, September 10 - 12, 2025, Bonn "Reconciling land system changes with planetary health"

Citizen science for biodiversity monitoring and pathogen detection in coffee farms in the Dominican Republic

¹Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institut, Institute of Biodiversity, Germany
²Oro Verde die Tropenwaldstiftung, International Projects, Germany
³Centro para la Educación y Acción Ecológica, Naturaleza - CEDAE, Dominican Republic
⁴IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group, Austria

Abstract

The lack of knowledge of biodiversity in tropical croplands, particularly in the Caribbean, is commonly a challenge for both farmers and conservationists. Local producers and NGOs face the task of having to monitor biodiversity with an evident lack of human, monetary and technical resources, despite the importance that it represents for the ecosystem services that maintain their crops and natural areas.

In this context, citizen science emerges as a potent alternative that can aid local producers and NGOs to increase the knowledge of the current state of their local biodiversity.

In this work, we present a local implementation of a citizen science initiative using iNaturalist to record local biodiversity in coffee farms in the Mao Valverde region in the Dominican Republic. A protocol was established, and a workshop was held to introduce the local partners (NGO: Centro de la Naturaleza A.C. CEDAE) to the utilisation of this tool. Later on, CEDAE organised workshops with the farmers and their children to record biodiversity as established in the protocol.

More than 750 registries were captured, and among them, certain pathogens such as coffee rust (Hemileia vastatrix) were detected.

With the collected data as well as complementary data from iNaturalist and GBIF databases, niche modelling was applied to forecast the probable distribution of the pathogen. The derived information will help the local NGO to increase the awareness of the occurrence of this dangerous pathogen in coffee farms. Additionally, this serves as an example of community education and empowerment that can be directly linked to scientific efforts.

Keywords: Biodiversity, caribbean, citizen science, coffee, Dominican Republic

Contact Address: Hugo-Enrique Reyes-Aldana, Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institut, Institute of Biodiversity, Bundesallee 65, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany, e-mail: hugo-enrique.reyes-aldanathuenen.de