The Vetiver System (Global)'s Journal

In January 2021, The Vetiver Network International (TVNI, www.vetiver.org) set up a Vetiver System community project on the iNaturalist website, a social network to help map and share observations of species around the world. Although its core focus is on wild species in their natural habitats, iNaturalist offers the ability to share “captive” or “cultivated” plants and animals that were placed at a certain location by humans. This is where most of our vetiver applications fits in. The purpose of our vetiver project was to:

1. Track projects using Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT).
2. Raise awareness about the many benefits and characteristics of the plant.
3. Help potential VGT users and those who fund vetiver projects to get a better understanding of the distribution and success of vetiver grass applications.
4. Provide a basis for scientific study at all levels of education, from grade school to universities, to further our collective understanding and appreciation of vetiver's potential in healing the Earth.

The project can be viewed at www.inaturalist.org/projects/the-vetiver-system. To encourage our vetiver community to add their plantings to iNaturalist, we announced a competition in March 2021 for the most quality VGT sites added by March 31, 2022, with First Prize $500 USD, Second Prize $300, and Third Prize $200. The competition had a few rules, including cultivated-permanent sites of mature vetiver, at least two photographs of each plot, geo-referenced locations, and a description about the purpose of the application (i.e. erosion control, slope stabilization, disaster mitigation, wastewater disposal, phytoremediation, forage, mulching, landscaping, essential oil, nursery).

Since the Vetiver Project page was created, approximately 400 vetiver plots have been added to iNaturalist! Although some of the sites did not meet the competition rules, TVNI reviewed each entry and determined the following winners:

1. First Place: VetiverTT in the Caribbean
2. Second Place: Ngo Tho in Vietnam
3. Third Place: Vetiver Ingeniería Viva in Guatemala

We also want to give special recognition to those who posted at least 10 vetiver sites:

• Russel Jardiolin of the Philippines
• Lata Hailu of Ethiopia
• Evan Millwood of Erosion QLD in Australia

Thank you very much to everyone who added their vetiver to iNaturalist, even if you only posted one or two plots. We ask all of you who are actively engaged with VGT to continue adding your planting locations and other observations to iNaturalist. They all help to build up a picture of how and where vetiver is being planted globally. This will help to encourage others to use the plant, and international and national agencies to understand the potential of vetiver. To learn how to add your vetiver to iNaturalist, read this helpful guide: https://vetiver.org/TVN_iNaturalist%20Project.pdf and feel free to ask us any questions.

Vetiver Grass Technology - VETIVER LOCATION (iNaturalist) COMPETITION - US$1,000 cash prizes

We have been testing out the iNaturalist “Vetiver Systems” community project (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/vetiver-systems) for the past few weeks. It works well using both the iNaturalist website -- https://www.inaturalist.org -- and its smart phone app. The purpose of the Vetiver Systems project is to help potential Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT) users and those who fund vetiver projects to get a better understanding of the distribution of vetiver grass applications around the world. Nowadays everybody seems so busy that they have little time to devote a few minutes to the simple task of recording their vetiver plantings! So we want to provide some encouragement!!!!

TVNI will (through donations - still time to donate at TVNI website www.vetiver.org) award three prizes: Ist Prize US$500, 2nd prize $300 and 3rd prize $200 to those persons who add the greatest number of quality Vetiver Grass Technology (VGT) application sites to iNaturalist by March 31 2022. The competition does however come with some rules:

To be eligible for a prize the entrant must:

1. Add cultivated-permanent VGT sites (floating vetiver pontoons are temporary and not eligible) to iNaturalist and properly complete the information required by iNaturalist by March 31 2022.
2. Sites added must be geo-referenced (Lat/Long) at the location of the vetiver planting (we will check the site using satellite imagery).
3. At least two photographs should be included - one a close up of the observed vetiver (to enable identity confirmation) and the other a more distant shot of the site. We encourage more, particularly if you have before/after, and time series.
4. A minimum of one sentence describing the purpose of the application, though we encourage more information in the notes field (e.g., when planted, how many plants used, size of area protected, observations on establishment/management, etc).
5. The site must show mature vetiver - at least 1 year old.
6. Sites must be of vetiver planted for a specific purpose (e.g . riverbank stabilization, on farm erosion control, wastewater treatment area, nurseries, landscaping, essential oil, etc).

We hope that you will take the opportunity of Naturalist to record observations of other animal or plant species that you might be interested in.

THE JUDGES DECISION WILL BE FINAL!!!! The count will be based on the iNaturalist automatic count of observation observations with some spot checks by the judges.

Erosion QLD (https://www.erosionqld.com.au/) has put together two great photo guides to propagating and planting vetiver. The guides can be found on their website or at www.vetiver.org. For the direct access via vetiver.org, use these links:

Propagation Guide: https://www.vetiver.org/AUS_Vetiver_Propagation_subtropics_o.pdf

Planting Guide: http://www.vetiver.org/AUS_Vetiver%20Planting%20Guide_Op.pdf

Once you start planting and enjoying the benefits of vetiver, no matter how small of a project or where you are located, please share on iNaturalist and through our facebook group page!

I am slowly transferring vetiver IDs and observations from the iVGT vetiver tracking system: https://ivgt.ldd.go.th/vetivertrack/

Please note that I will only transfer those sites that can be identified on satellite imagery and whom the original identifier is known to me as reliable.

If anyone has more recent information and photos of these site you are welcome to add to them.

Hello everyone and welcome to the first post of the Vetiver Systems Project Page!

We are a part of The Vetiver Network International (TVNI), an organization that strives to create a worldwide community of vetiver enthusiasts, raise awareness about the many benefits, and track vetiver projects. Our facebook group has become a wonderful resource for many of you and we are proud of the community it has created. We had concerns about the preservation of the facebook posts and important discussions, so we also created the vetiver forum (https://www.vetiver.org/flux/). However, neither of those help us track and map vetiver plantings.

To provide a tracking method, we started using the iVGT website created in Thailand to add as many vetiver sites as possible, but it has had some technical difficulties and participation hasn’t been as high as we had hoped. We recently realized there may be a better and much more user-friendly website that we can all use.

iNaturalist is a website and smartphone app for people to share pictures of animals and plants and to help identify species. It is used as a social network to build community, learn about nature, and provide open access data for researchers. It is very user-friendly, and you can easily search by species or location and view results as a list or within a map. The desktop website is the main hub with a lot of great functions while the smartphone app is a simpler set-up that helps ID and locate in the field.

Although its core focus is on wild species in their natural habitats, iNaturalist offers the ability to share “captive” or “cultivated” plants and animals that were placed at a certain location by humans. This includes a range of observations, from animals at a zoo to a flower planted in a garden. This is where most of our vetiver fits in.

The iNaturalist provides the ability to create a “Project” to track certain species or in specific areas, as well as build community and participation, so TVNI recently created a project page called “Vetiver Systems”. We hope you all start sharing your vetiver projects!

Getting Started

First, create a profile at https://www.inaturalist.org/. Once you are set up, you can change your language within the website by clicking on your account profile circle in the top right corner and then clicking on Account Settings, then Account. They have a large list of languages available, so this should work out well for our global community.

Adding a Vetiver Project

A picture of a plant/animal is called an “observation”. For general guidance on how to add observations, visit: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started.

1. To add a picture of vetiver, click “Upload” and select ONE photo from your file (You’ll have a chance to add more photos of that site later). Complete the requested information, including species, date of the picture, and location. For the Notes, add a brief summary of the vetiver project (i.e. purpose, size, details, results). Please avoid commercial advertising or spam-like content because it will get you banned from the website.
2. Next, check the Captive/Cultivated box. Most of the vetiver plants used in Vetiver Systems are sterile and cultivated, so it is important to list it as such in iNaturalist. The website’s main focus is on wild plants and animals and it uses a multi-step process for identifications, which helps researchers with their studies as well as assist the program with recognizing patterns for automated suggestions. To accomplish this, the website initially labels non-cultivated or non-captive observations “Needs ID”, then as the community agrees on an identification, it becomes “Research Grade.” If an observation is checked off as captive or cultivated, it does not undergo those labeling steps and instead simply marked as “Casual.” This is okay for our purpose! To learn more, visit: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help.
3. After that, “Tags” are key words about your vetiver project. This will help people search and track vetiver sites based on type. Here are some examples of tags that you can use: Erosion control / Slope stabilization / Nursery/propagation / Grazing/forage / Wastewater / Phytoremediation / Landscaping / Handicrafts / Roof thatch / Essential Oil.
4. The next step allows you to add “Observations Fields” to help provide detail. We set up 5 observation fields that we encourage you to use. Start typing vetiver in the space and the options will appear: # of plants / Area in hectares / Soil pH / Soil type / Annual rainfall in mm.
5. Click “Submit 1 Observation” to finalize. Once you finalize the “observation”, you can add more photos of that vetiver planting, add or change the tags, or edit any other information as needed. Please note it is important to add only specific sites where vetiver has been observed. Also, if you have been working with vetiver in the past and have photos of vetiver applications at known locations and dates, you are welcome and encouraged to add them as observations.

The Vetiver Systems Project Page

Your vetiver “observation” will automatically be added to our Vetiver Systems Project page, but you need to “JOIN” the project for it to show up on your vetiver observation. You can find our Project by typing “Vetiver Systems” in the general Search at the top of the page. Once you are on our page, you can see all the pictures, either as a list or on a map. You can click on each one to see the details or add comments. There are already some earlier vetiver observations from other iNaturalist users.

We welcome you to check out other observations in our project so far and tell others about our page. You can leave a comment on any observation or vetiver system, but be aware, COMMERCIAL ADVERTIZING is not allowed and we will ban you from the group.

Another great feature of the Vetiver Systems Project page is our ability to post news or journal entries. Our administrators will occasionally post on this page to help grow the community and keep you informed. Note, you need to “JOIN” the project to get the community updates.

We will also be inviting key members from specific countries or regions to help promote this Vetiver Systems project and to keep an eye on the "quality" of input. As the project expands, regional/country leaders can start creating their own project pages and then our global Vetiver Systems page will become an “umbrella” project.

Let us know if you have any questions by leaving a message for one of the project administrators. Enjoy!