Tips for and information about making observations for Life Responds

Hi everyone!
The solar eclipse is just around the corner! We hope you're excited as we are to not only see this amazing event, but to also check out how the life around us responds to the eclipse!

We wanted to pass on a couple tips about making observations for the Life Responds project:

1. Before the eclipse starts, make sure you've downloaded the iNaturalist app to your phone, made an account, have joined the Life Responds project, and your location services are on and you have allowed iNaturalist and your camera to access your location. You can use the app with no wi-fi or data connectivity, but only if you've done those things first. The app will remember where you were and the time you made each observation, and you can then upload them later once you have connectivity again.
2. Be sure to scout out potential organisms to observe before the eclipse starts. We want everyone to get to enjoy the eclipse and not feel like you're scrambling to find something to observe as it's going on. Both animals and plants are totally fine as observation subjects (most of the articles that have come out about this project have been about animal behavior, but we wouldn't be surprised if you see some plants that have light- or temperature-sensitive nastic movements respond to the eclipse!).
3. When you make an observation in the iNaturalist app and then choose to add it to the Life Responds project, you'll be prompted to fill in a required field about how close, time-wise, you are to totality (or the maximum extent of the eclipse at your location). Your options will be:

More than 30 min before totality
30 min before totality
Between 30 min before & totality
During or close to totality
Between totality & 30 min after
30 min after totality
Longer than 30 min after totality

The three fields in bold are the ones we really hope you'll make - 30 minutes before totality, during or very close to totality, and 30 minutes after totality. But if you're seeing interesting things at other times (or just got distracted and forgot to make one of those three specific observations!), you can select one of the other options to give us a sense of when you made that observation.

1. And remember, no response is still an important observation! Don't feel like you shouldn't share your observations if you don't get any response from the organism(s) you're watching. We're interested in seeing not only which plants and animals respond to the eclipse, but also how far away you have to be from totality for it to not have any effect. So knowing what doesn't respond and where we don't see responses are both important data to get!

Once the eclipse is over, we'll take a couple weeks to look through the observations, so check back here in early September for an update on interesting trends and intriguing eclipse behavior!

Posted on August 15, 2017 04:36 PM by kestrel