City Nature Challenge 2020's Journal

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped organize, participated in, and identified observations from the 5th annual City Nature Challenge! Despite a global pandemic, we had thousands more people participate compared to last year, and even with 150,000 fewer total observations compared to last year, we still ended up documenting more species!

Here are the collective results:
Observations: 815,258
Species: 32,500+, including more than 1,300 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 41,165

Most-observed species globally: Common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Since you can't click the links in the infographic, here are some of the interesting observations from around the world:
Stripe-breasted Starthroat (Heliomaster squamosus)
Western Bobcat (Lynx rufus ssp. fasciatus)
Variable Peacock Spider (Maratus chrysomelas)
Epidendrum radioferens orchid
Marten's Sidegill Slug (Berthella martensi)
White-spotted Slimy Salamander (Plethodon cylindraceus)
Craven Featherwort (Pedinophyllum interruptum)
Plains Zebra (Equus quagga)

The City Nature Challenge also contributed to the most observations uploaded in a week on iNaturalist again!

Thanks everyone! Continue to help IDing those CNC observations - it takes awhile to get through them! We're looking forward to CNC 2021!

-Alison (@kestrel), Lila (@lhiggins), & Amy (@amyjaecker-jones)

Are you 19 or under and took part in the City Nature Challenge by making iNaturalist observations? Are you a parent/guardian with kids 5-19 years old who participated in the City Nature Challenge - either with you or with their own iNaturalist account? Are you continuing to use iNaturalist now that the City Nature Challenge is over? Please join our research study! We’re looking for youth aged 5-19 who use iNaturalist (regardless of participation in the City Nature Challenge, but we figured this was a good place to start!).

Click here to learn more & sign up.

The purpose of this study is to understand the experiences of young people aged 5 to 19 when using online citizen science platforms, in this case, iNaturalist. This is part of the Learning and Environmental science Agency Research Network for Citizen Science (LEARN CitSci), a research collaboration between UC Davis, the California Academy of Sciences, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Natural History Museum London, Open University, and the University of Oxford. We are carrying out this research on behalf of the National Science Foundation, Wellcome, and Economic and Social Research Council who have funded this program.

If I take part in this research, what will be involved?
We will be analyzing the online participation of young people who take part in the iNaturalist platform. We do not want you to change your online activity as a result of consenting to this research, as we are interested in your online activity regardless of how often you participate.

In order to identify young people, you will be asked to confirm your age and gender, consent that you would like to participate in the study, and provide the username you use to log in to iNaturalist. This will enable us to identify, capture, and analyze your activities using the publicly-available data on iNaturalist. Don’t be surprised if you also get comments and identifications on your observations from the scientists and staff at our Natural History Museum partners!