City Nature Challenge 2019: Birmingham Metro Area - April 26-29, 2019

Hi Everyone!

For the past several years I have been promoting the use of iNaturalist, and trying to increase the number of nature observations being submitted from Alabama for the Biodiversity of Alabama project and other iNaturalist projects within the state. The Biodiversity of Alabama project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-alabama has taken off since it launched, and now includes >142,500 observations from >4,200 iNaturalist users.

Building on this success, one of my goals this year is to have Alabama start competing in iNaturalist’s City Nature Challenge (CNC) http://citynaturechallenge.org, an annual event where cities around the world compete to see who can make the most nature observations, find the most species, and engage the most people during the event. The CNC began in 2016 with just two cities (Los Angles & San Francisco), and has grown each year such that more than 150 cities around the globe will be participating in this year’s challenge. This year I am organizing the 2019 Birmingham Metro Area iNaturalist Project which will be the first project from Alabama to compete in a City Nature Challenge https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-birmingham-metro-area. This CNC project will include all iNaturalist observations made between April 26 - 29, 2019 from Bibb, Blount, Calhoun, Coosa, Culman, Etowah, Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Talladega, Tuscaloosa, and Walker Counties. If successful, I’m hopeful in the future we can encourage other Alabama cites (e.g., Huntsville, Mobile, etc.) to create similar projects for future challenges.

The CNC competition takes place in two parts: first nature observations need to be made between April 26 - 29, and then from April 30 - May 5 there is a period for these observations to be identified by the iNaturalist community as best as possible before the challenge ends, and the final numbers are counted for each competing city project in the event.

Please consider joining the 2019 Birmingham Metro Area iNaturalist Project by clicking on the "Join" button on the top right of the project page https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-birmingham-metro-area. Once you join you will receive future posts from this CNC project including announcements of iNaturalist events (e.g., training sessions, bioblitzes, nature walks, ID parties, etc.) in the area that will be taking place as part of this year's competition.

Finally, please feel free to brainstorm about other ideas to increase awareness and public participation in this CNC project, ask questions, etc. in the comments – and definitely add others to this journal post via tagging them in the comments!

Thanks,

John Friel
Alabama Museum of Natural History

Posted on February 1, 2019 03:04 PM by friel