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Since the late 1970s, the BirdLife Partnership has been working collectively to identify, document and protect places on the Earth with the greatest significance for the conservation of the world's birds. As a result, over 13,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) have been identified. However, we lack comprehensive monitoring of the condition of these sites, with an increasing number of IBAs under threat from damaging development – the majority of which appears to be poorly planned and does not take environmental values into account. Sites face a wide range of problems, which require an equally wide range of solutions. To address this problem, Natura Alert has been developed within the Horizon 2020-funded LandSense Citizen Observatory project. Natura Alert is a mobile app and web portal that allows users to pinpoint the location of threats to biodiversity and habitat changes, to prevent the further damage or loss to our biodiversity. We are particularly interested in threats that are occurring inside IBAs, Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and Natura 2000 sites in the European Union, although submitting records in other areas is also possible. Information on the condition of these sites, the threats to them, the conservation measures in place and the changes in these aspects over time are essential to set priorities, hold governments to account and inform policies and decision-makers. Volunteers can share their observations with the wider community and help to map the state of our most valuable sites around the world. They can download our mobile app to quickly record their observations in the field or use the web app to discover more functionalities, such as visualizing reports from other users, creating dashboards per country and downloading their own reports. Natura Alert is being tested in Spain and Indonesia, thanks to the volunteer network of two BirdLife partners: SEO/BirdLife and Burung. While the Spanish volunteers are focusing on threats to birds and habitats within IBAs and Natura 2000 sites, the Indonesian communities are validating alerts from satellite-image analysis for forest change on Flores island. Citizen observations trigger real-time alerts to national and regional IBA/KBA coordinators at BirdLife International, who will ensure that the data are of high quality and produce regional and global monitoring assessments that could help monitor the indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Also, researchers and practitioners around the globe can benefit from this type of data, as well as institutions and stakeholders from the private sector willing to make better decisions based on high quality data via the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT).

Since the late 1970s, the BirdLife Partnership has been working collectively to identify, document and protect places on the Earth with the greatest significance for the conservation of the world's birds. As a result, over 13,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) have been identified. However, we lack comprehensive monitoring of the condition of these sites, with an increasing number of IBAs under threat from damaging development – the majority of which appears to be poorly planned and does not take environmental values into account. Sites face a wide range of problems, which require an equally wide range of solutions. To address this problem, Natura Alert has been developed within the Horizon 2020-funded LandSense Citizen Observatory project. Natura Alert is a mobile app and web portal that allows users to pinpoint the location of threats to biodiversity and habitat changes, to prevent the further damage or loss to our biodiversity. We are particularly interested in threats that are occurring inside IBAs, Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and Natura 2000 sites in the European Union, although submitting records in other areas is also possible. Information on the condition of these sites, the threats to them, the conservation measures in place and the changes in these aspects over time are essential to set priorities, hold governments to account and inform policies and decision-makers. Volunteers can share their observations with the wider community and help to map the state of our most valuable sites around the world. They can download our mobile app to quickly record their observations in the field or use the web app to discover more functionalities, such as visualizing reports from other users, creating dashboards per country and downloading their own reports. Natura Alert is being tested in Spain and Indonesia, thanks to the volunteer network of two BirdLife partners: SEO/BirdLife and Burung. While the Spanish volunteers are focusing on threats to birds and habitats within IBAs and Natura 2000 sites, the Indonesian communities are validating alerts from satellite-image analysis for forest change on Flores island. Citizen observations trigger real-time alerts to national and regional IBA/KBA coordinators at BirdLife International, who will ensure that the data are of high quality and produce regional and global monitoring assessments that could help monitor the indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Also, researchers and practitioners around the globe can benefit from this type of data, as well as institutions and stakeholders from the private sector willing to make better decisions based on high quality data via the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT).

As climate change continues, it is expected to have increasingly adverse impacts on child nutrition outcomes, and these impacts will be moderated by a variety of governmental, economic, infrastructural, and environmental factors. To date, attempts to map the vulnerability of food systems to climate change and drought have focused on mapping these factors but have not incorporated observations of historic climate shocks and nutrition outcomes. We significantly improve on these approaches by using over 580,000 observations of children from 53 countries to examine how precipitation extremes since 1990 have affected nutrition outcomes. We show that precipitation extremes and drought in particular are associated with worse child nutrition. We further show that the effects of drought on child undernutrition are mitigated or amplified by a variety of factors that affect both the adaptive capacity and sensitivity of local food systems with respect to shocks. Finally, we estimate a model drawing on historical observations of drought, geographic conditions, and nutrition outcomes to make a global map of where child stunting would be expected to increase under drought based on current conditions. As climate change makes drought more commonplace and more severe, these results will aid policymakers by highlighting which areas are most vulnerable as well as which factors contribute the most to creating resilient food systems.

As climate change continues, it is expected to have increasingly adverse impacts on child nutrition outcomes, and these impacts will be moderated by a variety of governmental, economic, infrastructural, and environmental factors. To date, attempts to map the vulnerability of food systems to climate change and drought have focused on mapping these factors but have not incorporated observations of historic climate shocks and nutrition outcomes. We significantly improve on these approaches by using over 580,000 observations of children from 53 countries to examine how precipitation extremes since 1990 have affected nutrition outcomes. We show that precipitation extremes and drought in particular are associated with worse child nutrition. We further show that the effects of drought on child undernutrition are mitigated or amplified by a variety of factors that affect both the adaptive capacity and sensitivity of local food systems with respect to shocks. Finally, we estimate a model drawing on historical observations of drought, geographic conditions, and nutrition outcomes to make a global map of where child stunting would be expected to increase under drought based on current conditions. As climate change makes drought more commonplace and more severe, these results will aid policymakers by highlighting which areas are most vulnerable as well as which factors contribute the most to creating resilient food systems.

The SDGs are a universal agenda to address the world's most pressing societal, environmental and economic challenges. The supply of timely, relevant and reliable data is essential in guiding policies and decisions for successful implementation of the SDGs. Yet official statistics cannot provide all of the data needed to populate the SDG indicator framework. Citizen science offers a novel solution and an untapped opportunity to complement traditional sources of data, such as household surveys, for monitoring progress towards the SDGs, while at the same time mobilizing action and raising awareness for their achievement. This paper presents the potential offered by one specific citizen science tool, Picture Pile, to complement and enhance official statistics to monitor several SDGs and targets. Designed to be a generic and flexible tool, Picture Pile is a web-based and mobile application for ingesting imagery from satellites, orthophotos, unmanned aerial vehicles or geotagged photographs that can then be rapidly classified by volunteers. The results show that Picture Pile could contribute to the monitoring of fifteen SDG indicators under goals 1, 2, 11, 13, 14 and 15 based on the Picture Pile campaigns undertaken to date. Picture Pile could also be modified to support other SDGs and indicators in the areas of ecosystem health, eutrophication and built-up areas, among others. In order to leverage this particular tool for SDG monitoring, its potential must be showcased through the development of use cases in collaboration with governments, NSOs and relevant custodian agencies. Additionally, mutual trust needs to be built among key stakeholders to agree on common goals that would facilitate the use of Picture Pile or other citizen science tools and data for SDG monitoring and impact.