Abstract

Wetlands provide essential ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration and flood mitigation to biodiversity support, yet over 20% have been lost in recent centuries, prompting global restoration efforts backed by policies like the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Despite rapid expansion of restoration projects, conventional monitoring remains short-term, expert-driven, and often disconnected from site-specific ecological dynamics, limiting adaptive management and long-term success. Citizen science has revolutionized ecological monitoring in other domains by enabling scalable, participatory data collection, but its application to wetland restoration has been largely overlooked. In this Perspective, we assess 120 restoration project sites worldwide and find that citizen science is currently integrated into fewer than 20% of projects even in high-activity regions like Europe, leaving significant social and geographic potential untapped. We find that recent advances in affordable remote sensing, miniaturized sensors, and mobile platforms—supported by rigorous data-validation frameworks—are now overcoming historical constraints regarding data reliability and spatial continuity. These technological shifts, when coupled with emerging institutional recognition, allow citizen-generated data to serve as a scalable, cost-effective infrastructure for monitoring ecological change over meaningful timescales. Systematically integrating public participation into restoration practice is therefore essential for closing critical monitoring gaps and ensuring the long-term sustainability of global wetland ecosystems.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ese.2026.100656