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Community science is a citizen-centered, transdisciplinary approach to addressing local challenges. While global issues such as air pollution, water quality, and biodiversity loss affect everyone, effective solutions must be tailored to the specific needs and capacities of the local communities most impacted. Developing actionable, sustainable outcomes requires the active involvement of  local communities, natural and social scientists, private sector partners, educators, and policy practitioners. Over the past decades, interest in citizen science has grown around the world while advances in low-cost sensors have increased opportunities for citizen scientists to collect cost-effective robust high spatial and temporal datasets that can address community needs.  Early proponents of citizen/community science include the Thriving Earth Exchange and Community Science Exchange initiatives at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the 30-year NASA GLOBE program operating in 127 countries and a public dataset of over 270 million observations.

For many Earth scientists, this approach transforms how research questions are framed, how value is defined, and how success is measured. This JpGU session will  highlight activities and case studies from the diverse JpGU-AGU community while inviting participants to explore adoption of community science methods in their own work. We will report on a new non-profit, the Next Generation Global Collaboratory, that was formed in response to shifting US Government research priorities and removal of public funds for GLOBE. Good practices under AGU's initiative will also be presented. Those activities promote partnerships among various stakeholders using emerging technologies that foster business opportunities, scientific breakthrough, and communities' benefit. Discussion will include project conceptualization, resource mobilization, inclusive communication, data democracy, open data practices, attribution, and links to decision-making.