City Nature Challenge Identification Period

We are now in the identification period of the City Nature Challenge, which means:

• You have additional time to finish uploading the many pictures and sounds you recorded over the weekend. (All photos and sounds must have been recorded between Friday, April 26 and Monday, April 29.)
• It’s time to identify observations! We need as many people as possible to help identify the more than 19,041 observations that have already been submitted.

We firmly believe that everyone can be an identifier and it’s a great way to hone your own ID skills as you page through observations and see organism names associated with photos. Here are some tips for getting started.

Get Started Making Identifications

• Begin with the Identify page for the City Nature Challenge 2024: Los Angeles County project. This will bring up all the observations that currently have “Needs ID” status.
• A short video explains How to use iNaturalist's Identify Page.

Use Filters

Filters are a great way to narrow down the observations to your area of interest or expertise. Here are some that we recommend.

• Select your favorite taxa by clicking on one of the category icons.
• Help identify the “Unknown” observations. A great way for beginners to help out is to identify the Unknown category by giving observations a broad ID such as, "bird," or "plant." This brings it to the attention of experts who can identify it further. Click on the icon of the question mark surrounded by a dashed line in the shape of a leaf. That will bring up all the observations that currently do not have any sort of identification. If you’re identifying the Unknown category, just remember to check if the user has added a “Placeholder” identification. If so, it will appear in the top left corner of the observation, once you click on it. Adding an identification clears the placeholder so it may be good to leave it alone. Chances are, the observer will add it as an identification themselves.
• Help identify Captive/Cultivated observations. During the CNC many observations come in of garden plants and captive animals. Once something is marked Captive/Cultivated, it becomes a “Casual” observation and doesn’t show up in the usual filter for “Needs ID.” By clicking the filter box for “Captive” you can help provide feedback and identifications for those observations. (When going through “Captive” observations, you won’t need to mark them as Captive/Cultivated because they already have been. Otherwise, they wouldn’t show up via that filter. Remember to go back into the Filters and click on "Needs ID" when you want to go back to identifying those observations.
• Identify observations made by people are new to iNaturalist. Under “Account Creation,” you can pull up observations made by people who joined iNaturalist in the last week. If you want to extend that to those who joined in the last month, go up to the URL and change “after=1w” to “after=4w”.

Additional Tips

• As you go through observations, especially plants, mark anything that is obviously captive or cultivated as “Captive/Cultivated” at the bottom of the observation. This is something that anyone can do and helps clean up the data for researchers.
• Welcome new iNaturalist users and offer helpful guidance. iNaturalist has a page devoted to Frequently Used Responses that features scripts you can use when encountering common issues.
• When you get to the end of a page of observations, iNaturalist will ask if you want to “Mark all as reviewed.” Doing so will mean that you won’t see those particular observations again.
• Remember, it's ok to be conservative. Only make suggestions based on what you are comfortable in your own ability to identify. Other people will also be making identifications on these observations. Additionally, don't worry if you can't ID something down to the species level. Many observations can't be ID'd to species level because of photo quality or because some species can only be identified by looking at a specimen under a microscope.
• You don’t have to be an expert.
• Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Wrong IDs happen to everyone and each one is a learning opportunity.

Let Us Know What You Find Interesting

As you're going through observations, let us know if you find anything interesting. Is it rare or extremely threatened? Is it observed outside of its normal range? Does it showcase interesting behavior? Is there a great photo or story attached to it? You can send us a message with a link to the observation and tell us why you think it's interesting or you can tag us in the observation comments so we can check it out @natureinla. We'd also love to hear your stories of community scientists and their experiences with the CNC. We may be able to feature them on social media or in our CNC results post.

Thanks to everyone who made observations this weekend and for your help in identifying.

Stay tuned for our results post the afternoon of May 6!

Posted on April 30, 2024 07:42 PM by natureinla