Coordinating our patrols
@joescience1, @merav, @anudibranchmom, @sea-kangaroo, @truthseqr: It's awesome to have a bunch of us doing these patrols, but it means that we really need to pay attention to coordinating with each other. My last two patrols have been frustrated by miscommunication, and I'm sure that all of us would rather be doing this efficiently and without duplication. So this post is an attempt at strengthening our coordination.
We need to have a single, authoritative place for scheduling. We currently have the Alma Bridge Newt Patrol Google calendar, which seems potentially very useful, but only if everyone consistently does the following:
- Make sure that we're signing up on the actual Alma Bridge Newt Patrol calendar, and not a personal or some other calendar.
- Include which half we're doing.
- Do the half we're on the calendar for.
- Add the patrol to the calendar with as much lead time as possible, so others can plan accordingly.
If GCalendar isn't the thing, then what should we use to coordinate? We can post through iNat, and agree to check it regularly, but that's still error-prone if we don't check it at just the right time. Email list? Something else?
Nothing is perfect, so I'm totally open to whatever works for everyone, as long as we pick a system and all use it consistently. Thoughts?
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Thanks for your efforts to improve the system, Stacie. Since I'm not participating in the patrols this year, I haven't been checking the Google Calendar, so I'll leave it to others to comment on its effectiveness.
We do need to try to eliminate duplication, however. The mitigation team of professionals is already questioning our numbers, since the total so far is almost twice that of last year.
Joe, please post your observations for 12/22 and I will go through them and compare with Stacie's observations and mark the duplicates.
Merav observed something very interesting last year. She and I did a survey early in the morning and we found 10 dead newts on the road near Limekiln Trail. She returned in the afternoon and only 1 out of the 10 was still there. Were the others carried away on car tires? Or smashed into oblivion by many run-overs? It's a mystery.
@joescience1, @newtpatrol, @merav, @sea_kangaroo, @anudibranchmom
i removed many of them, flicking them off to the sides of the road, so her numbers should be much less.
How about if I delete my observations from 12/22, since they're known to be off if @joescience1 removed some of the bodies earlier. That way no duplicates need to be marked, which seems like a tedious process, @truthseqr, and no need if we just go with Joe's set.
my apologies if i marked the wrong 1/2. what numbers did you get?
i have been trying to be more specific in marking where they are on the map, as any attempts a mitigation will work better with more precise data. this second collection was hampered by the rain and my map getting soaked. i did drive the road from the pull out just before the quarry road as 0.0 mile post and mark each .1 miles with a photo to as to try and better coordinate future observations.
i can send these pictures if anyone wants them.
?? i am frustrated by iNaturalist at times as i marked all of these observations with the tag "Roadkill" and added them to the survey list... most did not get registered as either. suggestions?
@joescience1 I logged 85 dead newts - how many did you see? As for individual locations, I just use the geotag information that is saved with the observation photo, I don't mark locations on any sort of separate map. Geotags work well, they seem precise enough, the clusters are obvious and at the right places. Occasionally my phone records a wacky location, like on the other side of 17, but that's pretty rare, so I just keep an eye out for those, and manually relocate them based on timing with other observations.
i'll have to try that with the geotag... i have been placing all of them on the map by hand dependent on the order in which i took them and the marks i was trying to tally on my paper map on a clipboard... rather old school i guess.
we had 141 dead ones and no live ones. one dead barn owl.
@joescience1, @newtpatrol, did you notice on 12/22/19 whether rowing lessons are taking place at the Los Gatos Rowing Club? Just wondering because a lot of the newts from Saturday are smashed into oblivion, as if many cars ran over them. Last year there was a lot of traffic on weekend mornings. Once I counted them and found 90+ cars per hour going and coming from the rowing club. The poor little newts don't stand a chance with traffic like that.
@joescience1, you wrote: "?? i am frustrated by iNaturalist at times as i marked all of these observations with the tag "Roadkill" and added them to the survey list... most did not get registered as either. suggestions?"
Try this method:
Click the Upload button and drag & drop your pictures to the "Drag & Drop" page.
Check the box "Select All" at the top of the page. Notice that all your observations now have a bold green border around them. This means that whatever you choose next applies to all the observations.
Click on the "Species Name" field on the left side of the page, enter "Taricha", and select "Taricha" from the dropdown list. All observations should now have "Taricha" in the species name field.
Select "Tags" on the left side of the page. Enter "Roadkill" and then click the Add button next to Tags. A green circled "1" should appear next to "Tags".
Now select "Projects" on the left side of the page. Click on the "Add to Project" box and select our project from the dropdown list. A green circled "1" should appear next to projects.
Continue in this manner for any other tags or fields you want to attach to your observations. When you're done, click the green "Submit xx observations" button.
@truthseqr @joescience1, I didn't notice rowing lessons happening on 12/22, and in general didn't see a lot of people, certainly less than I did today, a lot more people at the several trail parking lots in particular today.
There were three cars parked at the top of the drive for the rowing club, and we only counted 5 cars driving, including a Mid Pen ranger, in the 2 hrs we walked the road.
wow! i'll have to try that method, i've been clicking each one individually... which is why it took me so long.
thanks
Maybe rowing lessons don't start until January. Please let me know if you notice a sudden increase in traffic. Thanks!
Holy cow, I completely missed this post! I've been out of town + having major computer troubles and came back to 300+ notifications so must've just missed this in the welter of subspecies IDs. Regardless, my fault for not checking the project journal, which I will keep up with from now on!
I think that's a good indicator though that email or direct message might be more reliable for communication. It also might be good to establish a "default" schedule-- so far Merav & Stacie have been doing Wednesdays, which is great, and maybe Robin & I could settle on regular days for January. @anudibranchmom , would it work if I took Monday and you did Friday, or something like that? Then if Joe's doing a weekend day one of us won't go.
Would it also be a good idea to group-email once a week, just confirming our plans for the week?
(I'll follow up with this by email/message tomorrow in case everyone else's queue is full as well!)
@seakangaroo My schedule is pretty erratic - I'm not sure I should commit to any particular day (and I'll be in Hawaii Jan 10-15, YAY). I'll check with the group calendar for new dates when I get back.
My schedule is fairly hit and miss too. I'll be visiting Mom for 2 weeks (in Pennsylvania in January - @anudibranchmom I'm jealous!), away for a class (vegetation mapping with CNPS!) soon after that in Feb... So it will be hard for me to commit to Wednesdays. Even next week I'll be lucky to squeeze in one on Tues, on the way to house-sitting. Would it be useful for us to post on the Newt Patrol GCalendar when we're definitely not here? That could give others notice that we're short-staffed. Or is that just unnecessary calendar clutter?
for the life of me i cannot find the link to the calendar... can you please post it.
my son and i can probably go next weekend if needed.
thank you,
joe
Here's the link: https://calendar.google.com/calendar?cid=Z25xMWdtam1tZnFkMXFnbGduZjV0Mzc4czRAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ
(it appears you need to be logged into a Google account to view)
If you message me your email, @joescience1 , then I can add you to the "can edit" permissions. If you could go out next weekend that would be great.
@newtpatrol , that definitely sounds like it'd be useful, maybe go ahead and add your out-of-town dates to the calendar and see how it looks? (I added Robin's for sample viewing purposes)
I'm unfortunately still physically limited so I'm not sure if I can do more than half the road once a week, but there's another person who said they could survey on a "substitute teacher" basis if given a week notice, so they should hopefully be able to fill in a gap or two.
does my date posted for the 19th show up?
I don't see it. Maybe double-check it's on the newt calendar and not your personal calendar? It's easy to cross-post accidentally.
i can see it, but i cannot add to it and i don't see "edit" function.
i'll do the north 1/2 next sunday 8 or 9am.
Hm, must be not completely compatible with non-Google emails, which is annoying on their part.
I've added you to the calendar for the north half next Sunday 1/19. Thanks @joescience1 !
thank you.
@sea-kangaroo, @anudibranchmom, @merav @joescience1 Not sure if anyone will get this in time, but I'm trying to verify that the south half hasn't been done since last Wednesday (1/8). I thought I saw someone doing it over the weekend, now that's gone from the calendar, so maybe that person didn't end up being able to make it. If it's critical, I can go today (and stop at the MidPen meeting, on my way to house-sitting...) But if it was just done two days ago, perhaps I can/should wait until the weekend (when I have more time anyway.)
as far as I know, no one has done the south side since I was there on 1/8. I did the north part this morning, and there were dozens of fresh newts, and some old ones. I'll have the stats later. If you've got the time, I think it would be great if you could cover it. Unfortunately, I've got another meeting at the same time this afternoon, so I won't be able to attend. I might try to make it if my meeting will end early.
if it is better i can do the south side on sunday.
I coordinated with newtpatrol and just did the south side this afternoon, so we're good! Thanks, all!
ok, i'll stick with the north.
i just logged into my calendar and now, with a gmail address, it works. thank you for the help
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