Raphaella Mascia , Alison Smith , Yadvinder Malhi, Martha Crockatt

1) Developing methods for valuing nature aim to address biodiversity and environmental crises caused by nature’s undervaluation in decision-making. However, implementing methods to assess nature’s benefits is challenging for a myriad of reasons.

2) We explored whether community science (CS) could support a more holistic assessment of nature’s benefits on a national scale using a mixed-methods approach, featuring a systematic review of UK CS and a survey of UK community scientists, comparing UK national guidance on nature’s benefits with national CS projects and scientist experience. Our study is the first to: (a) combine a systematic review and survey to examine the relationship between UK CS and nature’s benefits, (b) assess community scientists’ perceptions of CS and nature’s benefits nationally, and (c) evaluate links between national nature’s benefits guidance, current CS programs, and community scientist experience.

3) Both the systematic review and the survey found that while few UK CS projects directly assess nature’s benefits, numerous programs indirectly relate to nature’s benefits, most often through assessing biodiversity. Furthermore, community scientists supported further expanding and integrating CS as a supplementary approach for assessing nature’s benefits, albeit with some caveats.

4) However, both the review and the survey also revealed substantial dissonance between national guidance on nature’s benefits, the CS academic literature, and community scientist experiences and perceptions of nature’s benefits, specifically for benefits from culture and recreation, soils and minerals, and aquatic environments.

5) In light of the highlighted discrepancies, our results suggest CS is a valuable tool for engaging local communities in assessing benefits of nature to people, nevertheless, future research and policy should better integrate CS into nature benefit’s assessments and vice versa. Addressing existing gaps in CS and widening CS methods to be more inclusive of pluralistic nature valuation methods and concepts is also crucial for wider application of CS related to nature’s benefits assessments.