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.

The efficiency of direct electron flow from electron donors to electron acceptors in redox reactions is significantly influenced by the spatial separation of these components. Geobatteries, a class of redox-active substances naturally present in soil–water systems, act as electron reservoirs, reversibly donating, storing, and accepting electrons. This capability allows the temporal and spatial decoupling of redox half-reactions, providing a flexible electron transfer mechanism. In this review, we systematically examine the critical role of geobatteries in influencing electron transfer and utilization in environmental biogeochemical processes. Typical redox-active centers within geobatteries, such as quinone-like moieties, nitrogen- and sulfur-containing groups, and variable-valent metals, possess the potential to repeatedly charge and discharge. Various characterization techniques, ranging from qualitative methods like elemental analysis, imaging, and spectroscopy, to quantitative techniques such as chemical, spectroscopic, and electrochemical methods, have been developed to evaluate this reversible electron transfer capacity. Additionally, current research on the ecological and environmental significance of geobatteries extends beyond natural soil–water systems (e.g., soil carbon cycle) to engineered systems such as water treatment (e.g., nitrogen removal) and waste management (e.g., anaerobic digestion). Despite these advancements, challenges such as the complexity of environmental systems, difficulties in accurately quantifying electron exchange capacity, and scaling-up issues must be addressed to fully unlock their potential. This review underscores both the promise and challenges associated with geobatteries in responding to environmental issues, such as climate change and pollutant transformation.