Slightly over ten years ago, we issued a report on the recruitment of smartphone users in recording biodiversity through the City. At the start, to make it as easy as possible, working closely with the IT Department we devised an app with a simple user interface we called "Naturespotter", hence the binoculars logo. Since the iNaturalist app had yet to employ identification tools or AI capabilities, the Museum provided "Real Intelligence" to curate user submissions and identify (hopefully) the plant or animal that had been "spotted". As enthusiasm grew for the project, users gradually transitioned to the iNaturalist app. The City's resources no longer support the app or the project, but as with most things on the Internet, you can still find traces of it out there! So, in retrospect...
"It has been about a year since the release of Riverside’s NatureSpotter smartphone application (now available for both iPhone and Android operating systems) and the inauguration of the ...more ↓
Slightly over ten years ago, we issued a report on the recruitment of smartphone users in recording biodiversity through the City. At the start, to make it as easy as possible, working closely with the IT Department we devised an app with a simple user interface we called "Naturespotter", hence the binoculars logo. Since the iNaturalist app had yet to employ identification tools or AI capabilities, the Museum provided "Real Intelligence" to curate user submissions and identify (hopefully) the plant or animal that had been "spotted". As enthusiasm grew for the project, users gradually transitioned to the iNaturalist app. The City's resources no longer support the app or the project, but as with most things on the Internet, you can still find traces of it out there! So, in retrospect...
"It has been about a year since the release of Riverside’s NatureSpotter smartphone application (now available for both iPhone and Android operating systems) and the inauguration of the Riverside Citizen Science program’s projects at www.iNaturalist.org. Over that time, we’ve discovered an exciting diversity of life forms in the City, the region and in the various locations where our NatureSpotters like to be active. And we’ve learned a good deal more about how much our project participants enjoy observing nature and sharing their findings, questions and thoughts about the natural world around them. With the support of the Innovation and Technology Department at the City of Riverside and the brilliant sharing tools developed for iNaturalist, we appear to be making a significant contribution to the growth of a worldwide community of naturalists and the knowledge of our planet’s biodiversity.
"In all, we’ve received roughly 200 submissions from 117 NatureSpotter app users, as well as project contributions from users of the iNaturalist smartphone apps. Our flagship iNaturalist project, Riverside Citizen Science now has 310 records, documenting 116 categories of plants and animals, with 31 people following the project through their own iNaturalist accounts. Our newest project, Seeking All Southern California Stinkbugs, launched in late Spring of 2014, now has 65 records of 5 different stinkbug taxa, and 28 iNaturalist users are following the project via their own accounts.
"The NatureSpotter app works just as well outside of Riverside as it does within the city, so the contributions of our users have included a remarkable sampling of the living world, ranging from a sleepy Common Poorwill in Upland, CA, to a yellow bellied sea snake in Baja California, and to wild horseradish growing on the plains of Saskatchewan, Canada. Through the careful observations made by Dana Cole of Moreno Valley, CA, we’ve been witness to the splendid nesting success of a pair of red-tailed hawks, whose three offspring must now be winging their way through Pigeon Pass in search of their own prey.
"All of this shared observing has been enriched by the interpretive resources of the collections at the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, the Museum’s staff, and scientists and naturalists at the University of California-Riverside, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Smithsonian Institution, New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and the global community of iNaturalist users. Thank you to everyone for making this possible, and we look forward to another year of exciting finds!" less ↑
Riverside Citizen Science
