carrieseltzer's Journal

Two years ago when I started working on the [now defunct] Great Nature Project at National Geographic and integrating it with iNaturalist, I quickly starting growing a list of other platforms with a similar mission to help people record and share their observations of biodiversity and connect with other nature lovers. I thought I'd found a use for Pinterest, but apparently you can only see my "board" if you're logged in, and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to join Pinterest. In the process of starting to write this journal post, it occurred to me that the information may be most useful in spreadsheet form (I should have been doing that all along!).

Link to spreadsheet of platforms!

Generally, these other platforms fall into these four categories:
-Global and all-taxa (like iNaturalist)
-National/regional and all-taxa
-Taxonomically specific and global
-Restricted geographically and taxonomically

Among the platform, there are also ranges of:
-Social interaction (i.e. can you interact with other people's observations or just your own?)
-Crowdsourcing
-Data sharing (how much can you actually see/download?)
-Expert review
-Identification tools/resources
-Mapping tools
-Educational resources

Let me emphasize the following:
-The list is incomplete. I generally didn't list platforms that were restricted geographically AND taxonomically (e.g. gobotany). Feel free to suggest others that should be on here.
-I'm happy to give edit access to anyone interested in helping expand the spreadsheet.
-Some of the summary information I entered in the spreadsheet may be wrong. Please correct me! I usually didn't spend more than a few minutes on each site (specifically for the purposes of populating the spreadsheet) and may have missed things.
-I didn't include EOL in the list because it filled a related but separate niche of biodiversity information (rather than more strictly about observations/records).

I've been wanting to write this up for months, so what better way to spend this Friday night, right? I've dabbled here and there over the last couple of years and talked with some of the people involved in these sites, but others have been difficult to explore due to language barriers, complicated interfaces, and geographic/taxonomic limitations (i.e. I can't contribute to a platform in a country I've never visited). I also included iNaturalist's four country portals (Mexico, Colombia, New Zealand, and Canada) on their own lines but their numbers are included in the iNaturalist total. I included "unverifiable" observations in the counts because many other sites rely heavily on similarly reported records so I thought it would be a better comparison.

I may be wrong about this, but my impression also is that there were two "waves" of these platforms. Several started in 2009-2010 and most of those look like they haven't had much investment for the last few years. Then there's a second wave of newer platforms that started around 2012.

I find the little sites restricted to a small geographic area most fascinating. I have immense appreciation for the amount of time and skill that it takes to develop and maintain a platform like these, and I'm amazed that some of these tiny user markets have been able to fund themselves. I suspect that the vast majority of people/organizations that set out to create a platform vastly underestimate the resources needed to do it well (I've been that person and seen it first hand!). I think it's useful and important to have independent evolution of some platforms, but there's also a big argument for working together and pooling resources to build upon existing infrastructure (i.e. New Zealand's NatureWatch integrating directly with iNaturalist). The most extreme version of this I ever saw (and haven't included here) was a site developed solely for reporting a handful of snake species in a very small geographic area. In the success column, I convinced a project manager on iNaturalist not to try to make a custom iNat app branded for his project because he had an impossibly small budget.

Also interesting: it's really hard to find user numbers on most of these platforms! Please fill in any of the missing numbers if you can. It was hard to find numbers of observations/records too, but I could often estimate from a page count.

What do you think? What am I missing? Send me your email address if you want to be able to edit the spreadsheet.

My family (me, husband, daughter, and parents) is flying to Las Vegas, renting an RV, and then going to Lake Mead, the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Valley of Fire. If any iNaturalists out that way want to meet up, message me with your email address and I can share our itinerary. We leave TODAY—I'm at the airport now!

I’m super excited about adding tons of observations on this trip, especially now that the new uploader makes it easier to add a lot at once. Also, I’m pretty clueless about western ecosystems, so I anticipate needing a lot of ID help.

This is a much-anticipated vacation after much hard work for BioBlitz. I’m incredibly excited about exploring this new-to-me part of the U.S.!

Fort DuPont is the second-largest wooded park in DC (Rock Creek Park is biggest). It has some great habitat, but it’s not on most people’s radar. There weren’t any BioBlitz activities there (it’s part of National Capital Parks East which had activities in both Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and Piscataway Park), so I thought it could use a little post-BioBlitz iNaturalist love. I’ve only been there once before and didn’t make it very far. There were just a handful of iNaturalist observations from the park (@ahay, @athryn, and @steveramanand), so @reallifeecology (Jonathan Carpenter) and I met up on Friday to help remedy that!

Noteworthy observations:
-3 kinds of slime mold.
-Several kinds of moss with sporophytes.
-Mountain laurel in bloom.
-Recently fallen hemlock. It was the only one we saw and it was unclear why it fell. We suspected a possible lightning strike, but even that seems strange.
-Massive white oak. @reallifeecology got a photo with me in it for scale.
-The tick my husband pulled off later that night.

For anyone interested in adding more to the NPS Servicewide 2016 BioBlitz project (and therefore moving up on the leaderboard), this is NPS land! Come make some observations! You can easily see where we explored (link to map) so I encourage others in the area to check out other parts of the park as well!

Thank you to everyone who turned out and helped at the DC BioBlitz last weekend! I was overwhelmingly tied up making sure that everyone else ended up where they needed to be, but I did have a chance to help @rachelstephenson and @figgtails make some of their first iNaturalist observations on Saturday afternoon at Constitution Gardens when one of our experts was unable to make it. There was so much to look at with our Easy Macros that we spent the whole time in one small patch of lawn!

Since I didn’t get to do much exploring on my own during the event, we had a BioBlitz encore on Sunday at Dyke Marsh with @loarie, @calopteryx, @reallifeecology, and some young naturalists! We also ran into @lynnparsons and some other BioBlitzers. My daughter said the best part was throwing rocks in the water with @reallifeecology’s son Cypress but I loved the huge crayfish!

It was especially great to go out with out-of-town supernaturalists @loarie and @reallifeecology. Scott had to head back to California but Jonathan and his family along with Matthew O’Donnell came back to hang out and have dinner at my place (and make a few more observations in my yard).

It's coming!!! I just unsubscribed from "all observations from the District of Columbia" so that my daily updates email isn't insanely long.

So many people have been working hard on this event in DC (@maryeford, @jbrown, @alliepetersen, @kellycoy to name just a few of the people I interact with the most!) and many more working on not only this BioBlitz but also supporting other events across the country (@loarie, @tiwane, @forester93, @geobudde, @biogeek5, @alexandra6). Very excited to have some local iNaturalists coming out for BioBlitz, including @treegrow, @calopteryx, and SO MANY OTHERS, especially all of the new folks recruited and trained by @alliepetersen! Also excited to have some people coming in from out of town like @reallifeecology and @kevinfitzpatrick.

We really want to get more people involved in identifications and welcoming people to the community too, so we're going to gather for a couple of hours on Friday evening with laptops to add identifications/comments/faves to BioBlitz observations. Anyone is welcome! @loarie will be there.

Friday evening 5-7 PM
Bertucci's
2000 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington DC 20006

We've scheduled this not far from the Biodiversity Festival at Constitution Gardens during a bit of a lull but there will be some great evening programming (and beer!) (with @dnlee5!) starting at 7 pm so we won't stay late at Bertucci's (at least I won't).

If you'll be watching the BioBlitz from afar, we'd love your help with identifications, comments, and faves. Keep an eye on the NPS Servicewide project, especially on Friday and Saturday.

Happy iNaturalisting, everyone, BioBlitz or not!

For the upcoming National Parks BioBlitz in DC, I would like to offer some items that people would find truly useful for improving the quality of the observations that they share on iNaturalist (no water bottles!) by making it easier to take photographs or more easily incorporating a scale object. I have a few ideas and I'd love to hear thoughts from the community. I created a very short form to collect responses, but you can also elaborate on your thoughts in the comments.

Bandana with a grid
It would probably be black fabric with a white 1-cm grid printed on it (we have to custom design and print it--I've never seen one of these before). I came up with this idea when I was photographing lots of fruits and seeds in grad school. It would provide a consistent background and scale for loose objects.

Slap bracelet with a ruler printed on it
Carry your scale object on your wrist! This would be another custom design. Would be easier to use in many circumstances than the bandana since it would be rigid.

Magnifying bookmark with a ruler on it
These are designed for reading and I'm not sure if the magnification would be useful at all in the field. I've ordered a couple of samples to test them out. They often have a string loop so you could carry it on your wrist.

Small Rite-in-the-rain notebook
Depending on your inaturalist workflow, it could be useful to have a notebook to jot down species names (if you're with an expert) or other observations.

Viewing box with magnifying lens
I love these things. Not easy to print "BioBlitz" on, but super useful.

Thanks for your input!

I've been working closely with @loarie and the National Park Service to prepare for the National Parks BioBlitz happening all over the country in May 2016. iNaturalist is a central component of the National Parks BioBlitz and we want to do everything we can to make sure that each species seen on an inventory gets recorded in iNaturalist. To that end, we are recruiting special volunteers that we are calling "iNaturalist Pro-Observers" to go on each inventory to help record the species seen and help inventory participants troubleshoot any problems they encounter.

We're working on training materials to get Pro-Observers prepared that we will distribute broadly to be used in advance of any other BioBlitz, but I am most closely involved in the event here in D.C. where we've already been working hard to get the word out to people who might be interested in leading inventories.

If you are in or near D.C., we would love to have your help!

Sign up here to volunteer as an iNaturalist Pro-Observer in/near D.C.

Sign up here to lead an inventory in/near D.C.

Thank you to @treegrow, @muir, and @jhammock for signing up already! And welcome to iNaturalist @francestoler, @dossification, @bbot20008, @joem50, @rsteele936, and @kostihl08!

Tagging @yakfur, @congonaturalist, @treichard, @kylefitzroy, @ligraceshen, @calopteryx, @steveo54, @jessica32, @dctr, @botanygirl, @timbir5, @ehurme, @ecologyelise @briangratwicke because we think you might be around.

I've attached a few observations from our site visits to different NPS units last week with @maryeford and @jbrown. You can message me on iNaturalist or email me at cseltzer@ngs.org if you have questions. We look forward to working with you at the BioBlitz!

In case you didn’t see my other post, the Great Nature Project is ending. I have loved getting to think about how to get more people observing biodiversity and sharing their observations as part of my job. I loved overseeing the integration of greatnatureproject.org with iNaturalist.org to make our site a portal into this community in order to build on what already exists rather than reinvent the wheel. We had plans to truly extend iNaturalist’s functionality in a unique way rather than just duplicate it, but our limited capacity prevented us from putting these plans into action.

The good news is that I will be able to apply what I have learned about iNaturalist and this community in my new role as “scientist wrangler” for the National Parks BioBlitz - Washington, D.C. happening in May 2016. National Geographic Society and National Park Service have been working together for the last 10 years to do BioBlitzes in different national parks. This year, the premier event will be here in DC, with hopefully more than 100 other parks around the country holding events around this time. I am working closely with staff from the National Park Service and iNaturalist to ensure that we get a high volume of high quality observations submitted to iNaturalist at all of the BioBlitzes.

We are currently recruiting people like you (naturalists!) to lead inventories in and near Washington, D.C. If you’re interested, check out the FAQs (pdf) and registration. The deadline is February 15. Sign up here if you want to get reminder emails about that deadline.

Don’t worry, I won’t be a stranger here. I might be a little scarce in the lead up to BioBlitz but rest assured it’s because I’m working my tail off to get more people on board. I still can’t wait to see what you find!

Last night several Homo sapiens gathered at the Science Club in DC to drink and be merry.

Back row (left to right): Scott Loarie (@loarie), Tim Guida (@timbir5), Yurong He (@yrhe), Carrie Seltzer (@carrieseltzer), Amanda Treher (@botanygirl), Stella Tarnay, Michael Gale, Matthew O'Donnell (@calopteryx), Jake Weltzin
Front row: Katja Schulz (@treegrow), Danielle Aube (@aegolius), Mary Ford (@maryeford), Matt Muir (@muir), Jessica Hamke (@jhamke), Michael Gill

Earlier in the night we also had @jhammock, @csavy, @audreykr, Dan Beaupre, Healy Hamilton, and Carol Seitz. Did I miss anyone? That's at least 21 people.

Thanks @muir for organizing and @loarie for bringing t-shirts! Who wants to plan the next event?

This Friday several of us are meeting up at a bar in DC called the Science Club (1136 19th St NW, Washington, DC 20036) for happy hour starting at 5 pm and going until...? Thank you to @muir for organizing!

So far it sounds like all of these people are planning to come:
@muir
@loarie
@treegrow
@timbir5
@csavy
@jhamke
@aegolius
@maryeford
@jbrown

Anyone else? Maybe @ecologyelise @botanygirl @calopteryx @amandaandmike @briangratwicke @dpom @treichard @adventure_us @dctr @lagirlstroemia @javierahr @ehurme @katl @mklein @layymkayy @lonnyholmes @andreaseabrook @jdeichmann @starfocus @guyfoulks @jimsteamer @rprather @ggnoma @yrhe @hsynn @jhammock ?

I'll try to bring name tags so we can write our real names AND our iNat usernames. The Science Lab is creating a special Biodiversit-ini just for us and they have plenty of other drinks as well. Hope you can come!