1st Iberian Ecological Society Meeting (2019); XIV Congreso Nacional de la Asociación Española de Ecología Terrestre (AEET), Ecology: an integrative science in the Anthropocene, 4-7 February 2019, Barcelona, Spain
The Barcelona coastline is a humanized landscape where beaches stand out, being part of the city history. The 10 beaches in Barcelona, with nearly 5 km in total length, are public spaces, easily accessible and integrated into the city. During the last decades, particularly after the Olympic Games in 1992, environmental efforts have been promoted to ensure that the beaches provide not only an opportunity to enjoy leisure activities, but also offering public spaces to move from an urban world to the natural world of the sea. However, despite such efforts, very little is known about their biodiversity and their potential changes with the urban environmental activities. The main goal of this contribution is to provide the !rst analysis of species richness in Barcelona beaches, based on the observations reported in the citizen science platform called Natusfera. The analysis will evaluate the contributions from two different activities: the snorkel trips offered during the bathing season, where the observations have been included in the Natusfera¿s project "Marine biodiversity in the Barcelona beaches" and those observations reported during the international bioblitz "City Nature Challenge 2018", were Barcelona was among the top 10 cities reporting marine organisms. Overall, the results showed that photographic citizen science observations are a potential tool for determining species richness while promoting people participation in coastal monitoring. We believe that this type of social participative methods can be applied worldwide as a complementary way to monitor and predict biodiversity responses to global environmental changes or impacts to human activities