Palo Alto Baylands/Byxbee Mini Bioblitz

A mini-bioblitz for the Moore Foundation Service Day! On November 20th, National Philanthropy Day, staff at the Palo Alto-based Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation are encouraged to use the day--as a regular paid work day--to volunteer for a day of service and contribute in their own individual ways to the wide-reaching impact that ​local non-profits have, all across the Bay Area.

Bioblitzes are gatherings of scientists, citizen scientists, land managers, and more, all working together to find and identify as many different species as possible. Just bring your smartphone and powers of observation to help catalog the natural wonders of urban parks and open spaces. Bioblitzes not only help land managers build a species list and atlas for their park, they also highlight the incredible biodiversity in these urban oases.

People of all ages and skill levels are welcome. During the bioblitz we'll explore the park and try to find and document as many species as possible. We’ll enter observations in iNaturalist and join together at the end to find out how many observations we made and how many species we found. By using iNaturalist, not only do we have a platform to compile all these bioblitz observations and make them available to mangers and scientists, but it makes bioblitzes accessible to everyone, not just experts: you don't need to know what it is you're observing, you just have to take a good enough photo that someone else in the iNaturalist community can help you identify it! less ↑