ארכיון יומן של אוקטובר 2020

אוקטובר 16, 2020

"Rules" for the bioblitz! Observe plants! :)

The NPSOT BioBlitz is coming up! I hope you're excited to do some botanizing this upcoming week!

For this project, it's quite simple: go out and observe some plants! You don't have to do any other steps -- this project automatically grabs all observations of plants made in Texas. Now, ideally, we want the wild plants -- so the cultivated plants aren't quite as informative.

Native plants are wonderful, and we're hoping to see the most observations of native plants, but this project accepts ALL plants documented in Texas. It's important to document the non-natives as well.

Observations have to be made between October 18 and 24, but they can be uploaded later on.

One of the most important tasks is curating the data -- so if you're able and willing to add some ID's of the observations, that's incredibly helpful! Here's the link to ID'ing plants documented in Texas that still need ID's:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?taxon_id=47126&place_id=18

You can also double check the observations that have already been verified -- extra verifications are helpful!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&taxon_id=47126&place_id=18

Have some fun botanizing this week!

הועלה ב-אוקטובר 16, 2020 03:20 לפנה"צ על ידי sambiology sambiology | תגובה 1 | הוספת תגובה

אוקטובר 21, 2020

Identifications needed! :)

Some great observations coming in for this NPSOT bioblitz! That's great!

Some of these observations could also use some guidance on the ID's. Or, you could add in any comments on observations -- welcoming folks to iNat, or providing some hints on how to get the important angles for identifications. Everything is helpful!

Here are the shortcut links:
Observations still needing ID's or verification:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2020

Observations that need IDs but may also have verifications:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&project_id=wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2020

You can also filter these results by county -- so if you just wanted to ID plants from Bexar County, here you go:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=research&project_id=wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2020&place_id=2685
Or maybe Travis County:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=research&project_id=wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2020&place_id=431
Or Dallas County!
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=research&project_id=wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2020&place_id=1281

If you want to learn a little more about the details of how ID's work on iNat, here is that info:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started#identify

Anything helps! :)

הועלה ב-אוקטובר 21, 2020 11:40 אחה"צ על ידי sambiology sambiology | תגובה 1 | הוספת תגובה

אוקטובר 22, 2020

An observation a day.... :)

So, some folks know that I've been trying my best to make at least one observation every day. This was inspired by @jmaughn , who has made daily observations for over the past 7 years! Well, I'm a couple years behind James, but for the past 2053 days, I've made at least one observation. Here's a fun "find your longest streak" program to see what yours might be:
https://mapsandapps.github.io/inat-streak/

So, why? Why in the heck would I do such a thing? It's sort of silly, right? Well, at first, it was just a challenge for myself. I won't lie, there are some miserably hot or miserably cold (believe it or not, we do get some cold icy days in TX!) where catching an observation was a challenge.

However, my reason for doing this has changed. Every day we interact with nature. I'm extremely lucky to live in an area where there are nearby parks or some green-ish roadsides to find some different plants or bugs. I'm also lucky to have relatively good health to walk around and search for things. Every day, I've been lucky enough to engage with some other species that are occupying the same space as I am. That's a cool thing!

And geez, I'm crazy lucky to be an urban wildlife biologist where I'm asked to know the local flora and fauna! Someone pinch me!

Like exercise, it feels better when you're doing it and afterwards. I definitely don't regret any day that I've been able to spend even a moment outside looking at/for nature. :) Being a plant and bug guy makes it a little easier -- these taxa are abundant in Texas!

Anyways, even if you're not making iNat observations, hopefully you're engaging with nature in some way, every day. :)

הועלה ב-אוקטובר 22, 2020 12:49 לפנה"צ על ידי sambiology sambiology | 14 תגובות | הוספת תגובה

אוקטובר 26, 2020

Observation period ended -- time for uploads and ID's, ID's, ID's! :)

Incredible success!

Take a look at these numbers so far:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2020
Around 15k observations of around 1900 species from almost 2000 observers! Wonderful! You still have time to upload observations made during last week though. And of course, we still need some ID's or verifications, if you're able to.

Compare with last years:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wild-plants-of-texas-npsot-challenge-bioblitz-2019
12k observations of 1600 species from around 1700 observers.

Stay tuned for some more reports of the success of this project!

Great job, all!

הועלה ב-אוקטובר 26, 2020 03:20 אחה"צ על ידי sambiology sambiology | 5 תגובות | הוספת תגובה

אוקטובר 28, 2020

New life list feature!

So, I've been playing with the new life list feature. It's pretty cool! As with all new features, I'll have to play with it for a good while to get familiar with it.

One of the things I'm going to use the most is the "unobserved species" with the place filter. I can see the thousands of species that I've not yet seen, even in my home area!

Here are the nitty gritty details on the iNat blog:
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/42454-a-new-kind-of-life-list

iNat gets better and better. :)

הועלה ב-אוקטובר 28, 2020 04:16 אחה"צ על ידי sambiology sambiology | 6 תגובות | הוספת תגובה

ארכיונים