Journal archives for August 2014

August 27, 2014

Report on a Year of NatureSpotter

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 (http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/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 (see http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/seeking-all-southern-california-stinkbugs), 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!

Posted on August 27, 2014 07:08 PM by jbryant jbryant | 0 comments | Leave a comment