South Korea - iNaturalist World Tour
Today, we start the fourth week of the iNaturalist World Tour. This week will take us to three countries in Asia (South Korea, Indonesia, and Singapore), three in Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland) and one in South America (Argentina).
We begin the week in South Korea. The top iNaturalist observer in by a wide margin is @pintail. As @amarzee told me: "iNat in Korea would not exist if not for @pintail" @pintail has submitted observations from across the tree of life and from nearly every corner of South Korea, but his observations are centered in Chungcheongnam-do. Most of the other top observers are also focused in northwestern South Korea in the areas around Seoul (e.g. @aganse, @whaichi, @taewoo, and @amarzee). @aganse 's observation are very localized, almost all from the ground of a single school that is becoming one of the best documented pieces of land on iNaturalist. @whaichi and @taewoo are among the power users that got Korea to rank 22nd and are great help to the community. @wonwoong , @wongun and @amarzee are also providing a lot of data. We give a special mention to @desireeka93 for uploading a large number of observation from Ulleung island, far off into the East sea.
The peak in the observations per month graph in December of 2015 marks when @pintail (who was the 280th person to create an iNaturalist account back in 2009 when iNat was just a year old) uploaded a backlog of 4500 past photos. His presence continues to dominate, but iNaturalist use has grown in South Korea since 2018. There have been several organized bioblitz events such as Bioblitz Korea. As the number of observations per month has grown we can start to see the seasonal activity pattern characteristic of most high latitude countries.
The top South Korea identifiers (@whaichi @taewoo, @wongun, @amarzee, @wonwoong) are all based within South Korea. @taewoo and @whaichi are impressive for their knowledge on insects and extremely quick identification of anything uploaded on iNat. @amarzee has lended his expertise on reptiles and amphibians while @wonwoong is a reference for other invertebrates and fish. Thanks to @marcoschmidtffm and @john8 for lending their expertise on plants and birds. @wongun is based in South Korea, but is known for his global reach for identifying hemipterans.
In the meantime what can we do to improve iNaturalist in South Korea? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread
@pintail @aganse @whaichi @taewoo @amarzee @wonwoong @lhurteau @wongun @bio96 @borisb
Thanks to @amarzee for helping research this post. We’ll be back tomorrow with Argentina!
Comments
Hmmm....I think you'll be back tomorrow with Argentina?
thanks for catching that typo - fixed!
@loarie The BioBlitz you linked appears to be for a project in Malaysia as well, not one that took place in South Korea. ;)
Compared to the breadth of observations from @pintail, @taewoo, and @amarzee and the quality from @wongun, @aganse, and @wonwoong my own observations don't feel like anything special but I enjoy seeing what everyone has encountered and am happy to contribute with identifications where I can. @bio96 is based in Daegu and I've been really impressed with the quality of their comments regarding dragonfly and damselfly identifications in particular. @lhurteau has also been adding a lot of great bird data.
Regarding iNaturalist usage in general, I've recently started seeing a lot of new accounts in the southwest of the country with "inaturalist#" type names - perhaps spurred on by an instructor - so I hope that area will start to become better represented as time goes by. There's a Korean site - Naturing* - set up somewhat similarly to iNaturalist that seems fairly popular and offers localized features such as temperature and humidity records as well as requiring users to select a taxa type and habitat type before upload. (It also sees a lot of fish observations which would be great to have on iNat as well.)
https://www.naturing.net/
whoops - bioblitz link fixed - thanks @whaichi. I meant to link to the Bioblitz Korea projects which I believe @mushroomdrhan, @waywawa, & @maryford are involved with. I'd be curious to learn more about Bioblitz Korea
Thank you for introducing South Korea.
I started an inaturalist when I liked birds and frogs. And now I am in the world of insects.
I sincerely thank @borisb @whaichi, @wongun, @taewoo, @amarzee, @vitalfranz, @tom-kirschey-nabu, @bio96.
From Mexico and Colombia my special public recognition to @wongun for all the Hemiptera Ids of these two countries in all these years, very difficult taxa for which we don't have local specialists in iNat. I am deeply impressed by your knowledge. And without iNaturalist this would have been unthinkable, connecting data with knowledge from so far away regions of the world
Take the chance to thank @wongun and @taewoo again for all the help on identification!
The iNaturalist community in South Korea is small, but is also quite dedicated and skilled. Having a background in entomology myself, I'm always amazed by the quality and skill in identification of insects here. Cheers for the shout out, @whaichi, you've been doing a lot of great work.
The focus around Seoul is no surprise, given that most of the population works and lives there. The infrastructure is not as built up on the southern and eastern parts of the country, making it tricky for those without vehicles.
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