ARMN Observations's Journal

Dear ARMN Observations members, earlier today I briefly tweaked the project to only cover April 26-29 for long enough so I could gather some City Nature Challenge 2024 statistics. I then reset the project to cover "All Dates" as was the case before. In other words, nothing is changed! However, you may receive an email from iNaturalist alerting you that there was a change. They err on the side of caution because some project changes could affect a member's observation privacy settings. That is not the case here and you should be safely able to disregard any such email from the project today.

By the way, the statistics showed the following for ARMN project members' CNC:

Number of observations: 6,596
Species: 1,074
Number of observers: 73

Impressive!

The ARMN Observations project grew tremendously since the last post! At this writing, the project has 119 members, contributing over 91,000 observations covering more than 4,500 species. We blew past our goal of at least 100 members and we are closing in on stretch goals of at least 100,000 observations and 5,000 species. Also, thousands of people have helped with identifications: over 4,600 Identifiers!

Today is the last day for taking observations for the 2024 City Nature Challenge. The Identification period then kicks off for April 30 through May 5.

Finally, be aware that the project collects member observations made within ARMN membership territory, namely: Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, DC, and Fairfax County and City. I welcome questions and feedback about suggested tweaks to the project including geographic scope.

2023 has been a great year for the ARMN Observations project. Launched as a pilot experiment in early February, the project has grown to 98 observers, 81,506 observations, and 4,460 species. Also, the ARMN.org website now links to a dynamically generated set of recent observations. It would be wonderful to close out the year with more than 100 observers, and "stretch goals" remain in place to get to at least 100,000 observations and 5,000 species. We can do it in 2024!

Happy Earth Day! The project is now up to 68 members with over 75,000 observations and 4,385 species. I hope everyone is getting ready to participate in City Nature Challenge coming up April 28 - May 1 and identifications phase May 2-7!

Just a quick note that the project is up to 51 members. More members welcome to join. Also I should note that interested folks do NOT need to join the project to look at what's going on. So even if you are really shy and "not a joiner" you still can visit and look around. Finally, the City Nature Challenge is coming up soon; see: https://citynaturechallengedc.org/ .

Back on February 3 I announced the pilot effort to create the “ARMN Observers” project in iNaturalist for ARMN members and allies. Yes, the start-up was a bit chaotic as I learned new tricks (and regrettably I briefly sort of spammed the listserv with messages). Yet now, just over 2 weeks later, I am pleased to say that the project at this moment of writing has 25 members, 53,571 observations, and 3,890 species!

Here are some general thoughts:

iNaturalist is an amazing global biodiversity participatory science effort. For a quick overview, look at : https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/about . Millions of users and approaching 150 million observations in the database!

Consider joining the project even if you don’t feel otherwise ready to fully take the plunge into iNaturalist. Even if you don’t make your own observations, you can keep an eye on what members are observing, and you might find that you enjoy helping to make identifications for observations that need confirming IDs to become “Research Grade”. Looking at what’s going on might inspire you to participate more over time.

Be aware that the behavior of iNat is somewhat different, depending on whether you access it from the phone app or from the desktop. From the phone app, you can readily see the most recent member observations and which ones still need IDs to become Research Grade. And the phone app is the easiest way to submit observations or help you identify organisms even if you choose not to submit your observations. The desktop version provides overview statistics and other more detailed information. Right now, Ken Rosenthal is our leader with over 17,000 observations!

The main iNaturalist website can be found at: https://www.inaturalist.org . The app can be found and downloaded by searching the Apple Store or Google Play Store for “iNaturalist”. Video tutorials about using iNat can be found at: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials .

To get to the project, on the website navigate to Community > Projects and search for ARMN. You can then click on the green JOIN button if you want to join the project. From the phone app, click on the menu 3 lines, go to Projects, search for ARMN, and then you can join.

At this time the project is configured to include member observations from Arlington, Alexandria, DC, Falls Church, Fairfax County, and Fairfax City. I may tweak this and welcome feedback; for example, should I include other nearby counties like Loudoun, Prince William, Montgomery, Prince Georges?

The plan is that ARMN members and “allies” are welcome to join the project. What is an ally? Someone who has a close relationship with ARMN but technically is not an actual member. Sibling location Master Naturalists who work with ARMN could be considered allies, for example. I do not want to include others at this time; there are other iNat projects that may be better suited for them.

Questions and feedback welcome! Steve Young, Frazmo@gmail.com

Hi everyone! So it only took about 12 hours to learn a lot about setting up and administering a new iNat project. If I had to do it over again, I would have talked to some experts first!

I had to learn, or re-learn, that folks need to join the project as a proactive action from their end. THEN I learned that my initial assumption that I needed to add people as under "Include Users" was not only incorrect, but if anyone was listed under Include Users, iNat took that as a switch that prevented others who joined from being able to see their observations. Now that was unexpected behavior for me! So, as of about 1025 Saturday 2/4/23, I deleted the several users I had listed under "include users", and presto, the number of observers listed jumped from only 3 to 15! Going forward, as soon as you join, your observations should become visible in the project.

With one caveat: the project is set to filter such that only your observations from Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, DC, Fairfax County, and Fairfax City will be visible. That could be tweaked and I will listen to feedback. (Maybe we should all be able to see your amazing obs from your exotic trip to Belize?)

My thanks to everyone for participating and bearing with me during the slightly rough launch. Please shout out if you have comments!