The variability of crater identification among expert and community crater analysts

The identification of impact craters on planetary surfaces provides important information about their geological history. Most studies have relied on individual analysts who map and identify craters and interpret crater statistics. However, little work has been done to determine how the counts vary as a function of technique, terrain, or between researchers. Furthermore, several novel internet-based projects ask volunteers with little to no training to identify craters, and it was unclear how their results compare against the typical professional researcher. To better understand the variation among experts and to compare with volunteers, eight professional researchers have identified impact features in two separate regions of the Moon. Small craters (diameters ranging from 10 m to 500 m) were measured on a lunar mare region and larger craters (100s m to a few km in diameter) were measured on both lunar highlands and maria. Volunteer data were collected for the small craters on the mare. Our comparison shows that the level of agreement among experts depends on crater diameter, number of craters per diameter bin, and terrain type, with differences of up to ∼±45%. We also found artifacts near the minimum crater diameter that was studied. These results indicate that caution must be used in most cases when interpreting small variations in crater size-frequency distributions and for craters ≲10 pixels across. Because of the natural variability found, projects that emphasize many people identifying craters on the same area and using a consensus result are likely to yield the most consistent and robust information.