City Nature Challenge participants! Thanks so much for your energy and enthusiasm for the City Nature Challenge this year – it was incredible to see so many people excited to document their local nature.

Please help us make the City Nature Challenge even better next year!

If you took part in the City Nature Challenge – whether you made 1 observation or 1000 – we’re hoping you’ll fill out this short (only 5 questions!) survey to let us know about your experience. All input is important and appreciated!

Link to survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CNC2017

Thanks in advance!
Alison Young & Lila Higgins, City Nature Challenge coordinators
(California Academy of Sciences & Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County)

This year's City Nature Challenge was AMAZING! 16 cities across the country, all mobilizing their residents and visitors to go out and find and document their local nature. The energy and enthusiasm for the City Nature Challenge was truly inspiring - watching observations flow in from across the US was great to see. Our collective impact was obvious and incredible - we also gave iNaturalist its biggest 5 days in a row EVER!

Here are the results of the City Nature Challenge (as of 9 am Pacific / 12 pm Eastern on April 22):
All 16 cities together: 124,092 observations / 8557 species / 4051 participants
We also added 3077 new species that had not previously been recorded on iNaturalist in these 16 cities, and 5689 new iNaturalist observers who had not previously made observations in these 16 cities!

City with the most observations: Dallas/Fort Worth with 23,957
City with the most species found: Houston with 2419
City with the most participants: Los Angeles with 1034 (also includes people who submitted via social media)
The San Francisco Bay Area was in the top three for all of these stats (the only city to be in the top three for all of them!) - great work everyone! We were second in observations with 23,024, third in species with 2313, and second in participants with 651.

Here's the full breakdown of those three metrics:

City with highest percentage of verifiable observations: Dallas/Fort Worth with 96.3%
City with highest percentage of verifiable observations making it to Research Grade: Chicago with 64.4%
The San Francisco Bay Area had 91% for verifiable observations (7th place overall) and 54.4% of those observations made it to research grade, putting us in second place for that category - thanks to all of our ID-ers!

City that added the most new species to their region through the City Nature Challenge: Houston with 594 new species
City that added the most new iNaturalist participants to their region through the City Nature Challenge: Los Angeles with 436 new observers
Here in the Bay Area, we added 134 new species to the region, which is amazing for an area that was already so-well documented on iNaturalist! We also added 228 new observers to our region as well - welcome!

Thanks so much to our top observers (@wbsimey, @dpom, @hfabian, @rebeccafay, and @sea-kangaroo) and species-finders (@dpom, @hfabian, @kestrel, @sea-kangaroo, and @mrchasse), listed above in the event stats - thanks for all the amazing time and energy you put into getting out there and documenting! We'd also like to recognize the top 5 people who added unique taxa to the Bay Area during the City Nature Challenge - taxa that were not found by anyone else:
@bhill with 53 unique taxon contributions
@damontighe with 50 unique taxon contributions
@kueda with 47 unique taxon contributions
@mrchasse with 42 unique taxon contributions
@kestrel with 40 unique taxon contributions

If you want to find out more about the results or have questions, add them in the comments and we'll do our best to answer you.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in the City Nature Challenge in the San Francisco Bay Area this year! And stay tuned for next year, when the City Nature Challenge goes INTERNATIONAL!!!

Hi everyone!

Just a quick reminder that we're pulling "final" numbers at 9 am tomorrow (4/22), so today is your last day to get any observations you made during April 14-18 uploaded, and the last full days to go through and make IDs on everyone's observations!

Right now we're still in the lead for observations, but only by a hair - Dallas is only 100 observations behind us right now! So definitely upload any observations you may still have sitting on your phone or in your camera.

And if you'd like to help increase our species number, here are all the SF Bay CNC observations that could still use IDs.

Thanks for all your energy, time, and enthusiasm you've put toward the City Nature Challenge this year! Look for a journal post tomorrow summarizing the final results.

What an amazing last day of the City Nature Challenge! Not only did we in the SF Bay Area pass 20,000 observations (double what we made last year!) and stay in the lead, the total CNC passed 100,000 observations!

End of Day 5 SF Bay Area stats: 20,702 observations / 2185 species / 609 people
End of Day 5 Total CNC stats: 108,020 observations / 7844 species / 3890 people

So what's next? Is it over? Not quite! We're giving everyone 3 days to get all their observations made during the CNC window (April 14-18) uploaded and identified. The "final" numbers will be whatever we have as of 9 am on Saturday, April 22! So go ahead and upload any observations you haven't gotten around to posting yet, and HELP MAKE IDENTIFICATIONS! The more observations we get ID'd, the higher our species count.

If you want to help ID but you're new to making identifications, please head to the Getting Started page and click on the "Identifying Observations" tab to learn about how to make the most helpful IDs.

You can see all the observations in the SF Bay Area project that still need IDs here: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?verifiable=any&captive=any&projects=11013&place_id=any
And you can help our friends across the country with their IDs here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?verifiable=any&captive=any&projects=11753&place_id=any

Enjoy this selection of photos from Day 5 SF Bay Area observations:

Way to keep the energy up, SF Bay Area! At the end of Day 4, we still have the lead with Dallas/Fort Worth in 2nd, Austin in 3rd, LA in 4th, and Houston in 5th.

Our stats at the end of Day 4: 16,969 observations / 2020 species / 531 people
And the overall CNC stats at the end of Day 4: 85,989 observations / 6989 species / 3341 people

Do you think we'll make 100,000 observations total by the end of the CNC? Today is the last day of the Challenge, all observations have to be made by 11:59 pm tonight, so go take those last photos! You'll have a few days to get everything uploaded and identified, the final numbers will be whatever we have as of 9 am on 4/22.

To that end, our friends at the California Center for Natural History are hosting a Wrap Party tonight, 6-9 pm at 7th Street Revolution Cafe. Gather with your fellow naturalists to upload your photos and work on identifying other people's observations made during the City Nature Challenge!

We have some amazing biodiversity in the Bay Area, enjoy these photos of a handful of species seen on Day 4:

Day 3 of the City Nature Challenge was pretty epic! Even in the rain, we managed to hold onto our lead, and climb over both our observation and species TOTALS from last year's CNC! What took us 8 days last year only took us 3 this year!
At the end of Day 3, our stats were: 12,887 observations / 1744 species / 443 people

And overall for all the cities participating in the CNC, our totals at the end of Day 3 were: 64,424 observations / 5919 species / 2775 people!

Keep up the observation-making today, since Dallas/Fort Worth is right on our heels! Need some motivation? Our friends at the California Center for Natural History are holding two short bioblitz-type events in Oakland today, a lunchtime exploration of Radio Beach and a post-work outing to look for all the interesting creatures that live under the docks in Jack London Square!

Enjoy some photos from Day 3 observations:

Day 2 of the City Nature Challenge here in the Bay Area was a huge success! Thanks to great weather, lots of events to get out and make observations, and especially thanks to all of you, we surpassed 1000 species (something we didn't do until Day 4 last year), and we TOOK THE LEAD!
Leaderboard: https://nhm.org/nature/citizen-science/city-nature-challenge-2017-leaderboard

At the end of Day 2, here were our stats: 9127 observations / 1412 species / 367 people

And celebrating the amazing work we're all doing together in these sixteen cities across the country, here's the collective stats at the end of Day 2: 43,521 observations / 4835 species / 2227 people
Collective CNC iNat project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2017

The weather may not be as nice the next couple days, but enjoy a rainy adventure or two and keep on exploring (and documenting!) the Bay Area's incredible biodiversity.

And enjoy a random selection of photos from observations made on Day 2:

Can I just start off by saying that you guys are AMAZING? What an incredible first day of the CNC! At the end of Day 1 (April 14), our stats were:
3289 observations / 890 species / 173 people

That's an almost 5-fold increase in observations on the first day of the CNC compared to last year, and 4 times the number of species seen on the first day last year! Way to go SF Bay Area!

How does that compare with the rest of the cities competing in the CNC? You can see the current leaderboard here: https://nhm.org/nature/citizen-science/city-nature-challenge-2017-leaderboard. Right now the three cities in Texas are our biggest competition.

The weather should be great today, so hopefully you'll have the chance to get outside and explore and make observations - before we get some more rain in the next couple days. There are four bioblitz events you can go to today, or just go out on your own or with family and friends!

Enjoy some photos from observations made the first day of the CNC:

The City Nature Challenge is just around the corner! We're looking forward to seeing the observations start rolling in on Friday.

A few details:
The CNC starts at 12:01 am on Friday, 4/14, and goes until 11:59 pm on Tuesday, 4/18. All observations of any species in the nine SF Bay Area counties will count for the City Nature Challenge.
The "final" numbers will be our total observations and species at 9 am on Saturday, 4/22.
So all observations must be made in the 4/14-18 time frame, but you can upload them later if needed. The more observations we have in and identified by 9 am on 4/22, the higher our total numbers will be!
You don't have to add your observations to this project (though you can if you want) - it will automatically aggregate all observations made in the nine Bay Area counties during April 14-18. Observations might not show up in the project immediately after you upload them, but will definitely get picked up the aggregator soon after.

Events happening in the SF Bay Area during the City Nature Challenge - join with others to make iNaturalist observations and to help ID!:

Saturday, April 15
Ring Mountain Bioblitz: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ring-mountain-bioblitz
Edgewood Park iNaturalist Trip: http://www.sequoia-audubon.org/fieldtrips.html
Bioblitz at the Green Hairstreak Butterfly Festival: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/green-hairstreak-corridor-bioblitz-2017
Competitive Nature Observing at Lake Lagunitas: http://www.marinwater.org/CityNatureChallenge2017

Monday, April 17
Oakland's secret beach!: https://calnature.org/events/2017/4/17/city-nature-challenge-radio-beach
Marine critters in Oakland!: https://calnature.org/events/2017/4/7/city-nature-challenge-document-marine-critters-in-oakland

Tuesday, April 18
Wrap Party! Upload, identify, get help, and hang out: https://calnature.org/events/2017/4/18/city-nature-challenge-wrap-party-upload-identify-get-help-and-hang-out