How to Define Biodiversity

Overview of the Next Three Posts:

iNaturalist is a couple of things. It is “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.” It is also “a platform for biodiversity research, where anyone can start up their own science project with a specific purpose and collaborate with other observers.” Regardless, much of the work is done by people that are not professional scientists. One may be motivated only to learn what animals are moving through their neighborhood or local national forest.

However, whether we know it or not, we might be providing research data to a professional level biodiversity research project, or a project which incorporates biodiversity data. From the iNaturalist homepage, “every observation can contribute to biodiversity science.” Indeed, when the observation data that we upload attains "research-grade," it is generally shared with global biodiversity databases, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. This data then can be accessed and used by researchers around the world.

Despite iNaturalist using the term biodiversity in a scientific context, I have been hard-pressed to find it defined on the iNaturalist website. So, in the next several blog entries I want to wade into biodiversity just a wee bit. Bear in mind, I am not an expert. Also, proceed with the understanding that this is a big discipline, and I can only present some aspects of it, and in a very superficial way. I am in no way attempting to be academic. I welcome any comments or input on this topic!

Stay tuned for the next post: The Issue of The Biodiversity Issue

Posted on October 30, 2019 04:58 PM by weedwatcher