Using Citizen Science Tools for Distance Field Study of Botanical Cycle Disciplines in Times of Pandemic and beyond

Abstract

Humanity has existed in special living conditions since March 11, 2020 when WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. This coronavirus disease has already taken more than 6.55 million of people's lives from almost 625 million of officially confirmed cases of people infected around the world at the beginning of October 2022. Lot of university lecturers, teachers and researchers are concerned by new challenges in the education and science process. Therefore, many new recommendations and methodologies have been published for effective teaching in the pandemic time focusing on different forms of distance digital education. Certainly, the process has been actual for biological disciplines too where the biggest problems appeared with the organisation of field courses. Every country and even every university have been looking for optimal ways within their epidemic situation according to country restriction rules. Therefore, we have generalized this experience, as well as developed protocols on example of iNaturalist platform (https://www.inaturalist.org/) for effective use of citizen science tools not just for distance learning of botanical cycle disciplines in the pandemic time and beyond, but also for collecting valuable data about plant distribution during this process. We present a future-oriented vision of the solution of biodiversity and sustainability education.