bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.18.388157; this version posted November 18, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 1 Reducing error and increasing reliability of wildlife counts from citizen science 2 surveys: counting Weddell Seals in the Ross Sea from satellite images 3 4 Leo A. Salas1¶*, Michelle LaRue2¶, Nadav Nur1¶, David G. Ainley3¶, Sharon E. Stammerjohn4¶, Jean 5 Pennycook3&, Jay Rotella5&, John Terrill Paterson5&, Don Siniff6&, Kostas Stamatiou7&, Melissa Dozier8&, 6 Jon Saints8&, Luke Barrington9& 7 8 1 Point Blue Conservation Science, Petaluma, California, United States of America 9 10 2 University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America & University of 11 Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand 12 13 3 H. T. Harvey & Associates Ecological Consultants, Los Gatos, California, United States of America 14 15 4 Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, United States of 16 America 17 18 5 Montana State University, Bozeman Montana, United States of America 19 20 6 University of Minnesota, St. Paul Minnesota, United States of America 21 22 7 Kostas Stamatiou Consulting LLC, Boulder, Colorado, United States of America 23 24 8 DigitalGlobe Inc., Westminster, Colorado, United States of America 25 26 9 Google Inc., Mountain View, California, United States of America 27 28 * Corresponding author 29 E-mail:
[email protected] (LS) 30 31 ¶ These authors contributed equally to research conceptualization, funding acquisition, investigation, 32 methodology development, formal analysis, manuscript writing, and project administration 33 & These authors also contributed equally to project conceptualization, data curation, investigation, and 34 manuscript reviewing 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.18.388157; this version posted November 18, 2020.