Urgent call for students
I recently noticed a bunch of observations where photos were taken from the internet (or other iNat users), and uploaded as observations by users of the Katsina flora project. Even though, this can be due to using iNat's "visually similar" function, this should not be taken for granted.
By this notice, I want to emphasise that you must only share observations if you have taken the photos by yourself. Everyone should carefully review his/her observations, and remove those that are not theirs. Otherwise they risk having their accounts being removed and will not be assessed.
You should also note that the Where (location) and When (date) of observations is the most important bit of information on iNaturalist. Only observations with a location and date can become "Research Grade", and locations should be mapped as precisely as possible.
I recommend project participants to use photo guide for identification: http://www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de/root/index.php?page_id=17
And the FWTA eBook will also be useful: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25442466M/Flora_of_West_Tropical_Africa.
Comments
Dear UMYUK students,
let me add some remarks on plant identification - on iNat we built a number of guides for the protected areas of the WAP complex, which is only c. 500 km to the West and has a similar flora:
Ferns - http://www.inaturalist.org/guides/3961
Monocots - http://www.inaturalist.org/guides/3918
Legumes - http://www.inaturalist.org/guides/3962
Other dicots - http://www.inaturalist.org/guides/3963
I propose to start such a guide also for the Katsina Flora. Meanwhile I will enable these guides to be downloadable for offline use on your smartphones.
There are two field guides / floras that I would highly recommend for West Africa in general:
1 - Arbonnier, M. 2004. Trees, shrubs and lianas of West African dry zones. Editions Quae.
2 - Poilecot, P. 1999. Les Poaceae du Niger. Memoires de botanique systematique Boissiera, Geneva. (unfortunately only available in french, but with excellent drawings and besides, the scientific terms are all the same...)
If you have these in your library, they will help a lot with trees and grasses. For the remaining herbs there are a few books on agricultural weeds, but not very comprehensive, I would rather propose to use the Flora of West Tropical Africa in combination with www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de .
Have fun botanizing!
Thank you very much Marco for your helpful comments. Jacob https://www.inaturalist.org/people/jakob is also helping us removing the pictures shared by more than 1 student and those with copy right issues.
Dear @abubello, many thanks for this timely call! Looking forward to the further development of the Katsina Flora project.
thank you for posting this. This has been a problem from students for a long time and in a lot of areas, since at least when I got here (2011). When people come to the site of their own accord, it rarely happens, but when it is an assignment they need to do for a class, it's sadly common.
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