alvarosaurus's Journal

1. April 2016
   Joined iNaturalist (I already had an account, but had never used it)

22.April 2016
Wassenaar. Dunes.

Protocol: Recorded all blooming vascular plants species. 300 meters transect.

29.April 2016
Started observing Briesetal. Riparian area. 2 beaver dams, many canals. Beaver lodges are upstream. Flooded alder carr (Alnus glutinosa).
Protocol: Recorded all blooming vascular plants species. Roughly once a week. 1.75 km transect, 3,5 km total (upstream, downstream).

1.Mai 2016
Started observing Nasses Dreieck Berlin. Former gaswork. Former Berlin Wall. Groundwater polluted. Sandy soil. 5 hectar. Ruderal area.
Protocol: Recorded all blooming vascular plants species. Roughly once a week.

14-15. Mai 2016
Konstantinovy Lazne. Part of Krušné Hory rift valley, Czech Republic. Broadleaf and mixed forest.
Protocol: Recorded all blooming vascular plants species. 8.4 - 9.8 km circular path around natural reserve.

Does joining a group increase the number of "research grade" observations (peer-reviewed observations) for the observations relevant to the group?

I joined the "Flora von Deutschland" (Flora of Germany) group. As of 26. Mai 2016, I have contributed 111 observations to the group. Out of these, 55 have been promoted to "research grade".

I have also contributed 28 observations not in a group. Out of these, 8 have been promoted to "research grade".

Group                                   Research grade % (n)                    Non-research grade % (n)
Flora von Deutschland                   50% (55)                                50% (56)
No group                                29% (8)                                 71% (20)
Total                                   45% (63)                                55% (76)

Amended:
There are of course many other possibilities why this is so, e.g. I'm more familiar with the flora of where I live than of where I happen to spend my holidays. So this is still a hunch which requires some more looking into.

Projects seem to play an important role in motivating people to contribute and increasing the quality of observations. In order to understand the impact of projects better, I looked for correlations between number of observations, percentage of observations with "research grade", number of observers, number of curators/managers/admins. To be able to compare projects, I chose projects which are concerned with flora exclusively, and which have at least 1000 observations. As of 30.05.2016, there are 11 projects which satisfy these criteria:

Name                            Total obs.   Research grade     Species   People   Curators   Avg. obs/person
 
Angeles National Forest Flora   3092         46% (1415)          417       16       1      193.25
FLORA DE NUEVO LEÓN             5735         63% (3626)         1095       33       1      173.79
FLORA DE MÉXICO                19797         49% (9775)         3376      256       6       77.33
Flora von Deutschland           3793         57% (2180)          776       63       5       60.21
Pocatello Spring Flora          1597         65% (1043)          220       24       1       66.54
Flora de la 
Sierra Madre Oriental           3606         64% (2310)         1151       49       1       73.59
Flora of the Laguna de 
Santa Rosa Watershed            1616         61% (987)           526       12       1      134.67
Flora of Anza-Borrego 
State Park and adjacent desert  2976         56% (1662)          401       74       2       40.22
Virginia Native Plants          1292         38% (487)           511       71       5       18.20
Joshua Tree National Park 
Wildflower Watch                1778         69% (1235)          307       85       4       20.92
Pteridophytes of the 
Northeastern United States 
and Canada                      2502         82% (2058)           77      133       1       18.81

The correlation matrix is:

             Total obs   Research grade     Species      Persons     Curators   Obs/person
Total obs    1.0000000   -0.24824711        0.9658069    0.82048973  0.5043143  0.1101514
Research g.               1.00000000       -0.3290142   -0.02714843 -0.4824401 -0.2192559
Species                                     1.0000000    0.73175997  0.5219708  0.1339048
Persons                                                  1.00000000  0.6265351 -0.4024479
Curators                                                             1.0000000 -0.4452245
Obs/person                                                                      1.0000000

Aside from some obvious correlations (the more observations the more species occurrences etc.) I do not find any correlation between these parameters and the percentage of observations which reach research grade. This is puzzling, as the parameters which are shown on the project pages do not seem (judging by this small sample) to be relevant to the capacity of a group to provide research grade observations.

So what are the relevant parameters? If you have a hunch, please tell me.