Vietnam - iNaturalist World Tour
We're in Vietnam for the 62nd stop on the iNaturalist World Tour! The top observer, @budak, has many observations from around northern Vietnam. @gernotkunz isn't even on the map yet (which at the time of this writing was crunched using data from August 1st and won't update until September 1st) but is currently the second top observer with many observations coming in from the Red River Delta region in northern Vietnam. The Red River Delta region includes the capital of Hanoi. Not far is Cat Ba Island where top observers @vietanhnguyen, @luanmaisy, and @earthknight are researchers on the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project. @shawnodonnell, a palaeoecologist at Queen's University Belfast has many observations from near Ninh Binh also in this Red River Delta region. In southern Vietnam there is another cluster of top observers north of Ho Chi Minh City including @epopov, a mycologist at the Komarov Botanical Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and @ytt with many observations from the Central Highlands province of Lâm Đồng. @ivanovdg19, a researcher of the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Moscow, also has observations clustered in this region. @grisha59599 and @tegipo's observations result from a Moscow University students excursion to Vietnam in June of this year organized by @grisha59599. Other top observers such as @bangtran and @nicovr have observations from all around Vietnam. Don't miss this great writeup in Mongabay about an observation by @naturestills on Hon Cau island off the southeast coast of Vietnam that @jkfoon was able to identify as an important snail rediscovery.
The number of observations per month jumped up from under 1,000 a month to around 2,000 a month this summer. This is likely due to use by researchers at Cat Ba Island and the Moscow University students excursion mentioned above.
@sethmiller, based in Bangladesh is the top identifier. @hkmoths (based in Hong Kong) leads insect IDs, @kokhuitan (based in Singapore) leads birds, top observer @shawnodonnell leads in plants and @charliev (based in Australia) leads in herps. @rajibmaulick, based in India, is the second top identifier and top observer @epopov leads in fungi IDs. Thanks to all the other top identifiers such as @earthknight, @juhakinnunen, @anilamanalil, @johnascher and @nickpoyarkov
What can we do to get more people in Vietnam involved in iNaturalist? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread
@budak @gernotkunz @vietanhnguyen @shawnodonnell @epopov @ytt @sethmiller @rajibmaulick @kokhuitan @charliev
We’ll be back tomorrow in Serbia!
Comments
I'd like to thank all the people on iNaturalist who have contributed to observations in Vietnam.
Vietnam is an incredibly biodiverse area, but it is also an area where that biodiversity is under extreme threat from a variety of sources (see link below). Resources for identification of many species are hard to come by, a matter complicated by the massive amount of endemism in the widespread limestone ecosystems, and many areas are difficult to access.
While it's a big help having foreign visitors and researchers contributing to iNaturalist, it's an even better contribution when it's Vietnamese nationals who get involved and contribute. Let's see if we can find a way to encourage more of that.
Link didn't edit properly, so here's the direct address: https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/on-one-island-a-microcosm-of-vietnams-environmental-challenges
Broken link, should be
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/07/citizen-science-leads-to-snail-rediscovery-in-vietnam/
Fixed broken links (Moscow Uni project too). Thanks @dianastuder!
Great to see a Museum participating in online observation records.
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