Quick survey about the City Nature Challenge
City Nature Challenge participants! Thanks so much for your energy and enthusiasm for the City Nature Challenge this year – it was incredible to see so many people excited to document their local nature.
Please help us make the City Nature Challenge even better next year!
If you took part in the City Nature Challenge – whether you made 1 observation or 1000 – we’re hoping you’ll fill out this short (only 5 questions!) survey to let us know about your experience. All input is important and appreciated!
Link to survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CNC2017
Thanks in advance!
Alison Young & Lila Higgins, City Nature Challenge coordinators
(California Academy of Sciences & Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)
Comments
Alison and Lila,
Thank you for coordinating the City Nature Challenge 2017. This was an outstanding event, and I was thrilled to be part of it, and to draw several others into it as well.
Not sure what the goal of this challenge is, I would like to read it's goals.
As you already know, having this challenge in April puts some northern cities at a disadvantage, and allows only a one month snapshot of what is happening in any given area. I would like to see the challenge rotate months. If we are really after gathering data, doing this annually for 12 years, with each year covering a different month, would sure give a more complete idea of just what lives in each of the areas we survey.
Concerning some of the technical details... I really like a five day period over a weekend, but would like to see a little more time to enter data. I had about 60 more observations I would have liked to add that I specifically went out to gather for this challenge, but just couldn't get them into iNat in the few days after the data gathering period ended. Why not announce preliminary results on the Saturday at 11am as you did this year, and then announce FINAL results a week or two later. Is this about the contest, or about the data? I guess the answer to that would determine your response to this request.
Finally, I think it would be helpful going forward, if iNat allowed the results for an area to be sorted taxonomically. Right now when I look at the 531 species seen in the Chicago area, I see them in order of reporting frequency. Nice, but of little value for someone who would like to see these observations listed in a taxonomic list instead, or for someone looking to see if a certain species had already been reported or not. I am not sure if that is something you can change or if that is with the iNat folks, but I can't think it would be too hard to add a filter that would show the species observed by frequency or to chose to see it taxonomically, the later which would have some important value beyond just the contest itself for those who care to know what is in their city or county as a reference.
Hope to see this challenge again next year, and instead of in April, maybe in the fall, or late summer, or any other month but April.
Thrilled to be a participant in 2017, thanks for your hard work on this!
-jrrs
Jeff Skrentny
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