E-Mail IMAGE: Volunteer monitoring programs, such as eBird, typically rely on observations made by nonscientist members of the public. view more Credit: Kayla Farmer Over recent decades, community-based environmental monitoring (often called "citizen science") has exploded in popularity, aided both by smartphones and rapid gains in computing power that make the analysis of large data sets far easier. Publishing in BioScience, handling editors Rick Bonney, of Cornell University, Finn Danielsen, of the Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology, and colleagues share a special section that highlights numerous community-based monitoring programs currently underway. They also describe the potential for such efforts to advance the scientific enterprise well into the future and make recommendations for best practices and future directions.