Converted Traditional Project to Collection Project

Years ago when we first stood up this project, the iNaturalist platform's infrastructure was not designed to handle automatic uploads of observations based on some criteria (geographic or otherwise.) That has changed, and as part of that change it makes the curation of this project much easier!

Now, based on a custom shapefile of the Central Basin of Tennessee (both inner and outer Nashville Basins), observations of the Plantae and Fungi kingdoms are automatically added to this project. Prior to this change, we had just over 2000 observations by less than 50 observers. Now, we suddenly have over 100k observations by over 7000 observers! This represents over 3000 species... BUT....

This also represents some new challenges. Nearly 60% of these observations needs an ID, an IDs come from the community at large.

The mission, should you choose to accept, is to help give these 60% some identifications!

This ecoregion is one of the fastest-growing in the country, which makes projects like this, our herbaria, and our botanical knowledge more important to document than ever. Biodiversity loss here, especially in such a globally unique region, is exacerbated by urban and suburban sprawl. These observations allow us to document what's here, and start making assessments about how things are changing over time and through the seasons.

Thank you so much for your participation in this project, to date. Happy iNat'ing!

-Sunny

P.S. and to anticipate the question before I get it... why don't I just restrict it to Research Grade? The initial purpose of this project was to amass a complete flora, not to conduct a study or some other activity that might be better off with "Research Grade" only observations. In the spirit of its intent, observations without IDs or that are not research grade are still valid, in my opinion, as time and community participation can always improve it! You never know what crazy stuff people can find and photograph, even if they don't know what it is.

Posted on January 4, 2023 12:03 AM by trichomanes