It's not over yet! Keep uploading and doing ID's through Sunday...
Observations are still rolling in. I'm very grateful that we have more time this year to upload observations and make ID's--last year's upload/ID period ended at 9am on Friday #2 (today). This year, we have through Sunday!
Keep at those ID's. When you add an ID, lots of good things happen:
--CNC observers (many of whom are brand new to iNat) get some quick feedback and a true sense of the power of iNat, which goes beyond the amazing computer vision to the source of the real magic: real live people who care about our natural world.
--Observers have the opportunity to learn from their correct ID's and/or their mistakes.
--YOU get a better sense of how to provide good clear evidence via in-focus photos that show the essential aspects of the organism--by seeing many submissions that don't :-)
--More observations reach Research Grade (RG), making them eligible data for scientific publications. (Did you know that more than 260 scientific publications have used iNat data?!)
--RG observations help us reach another (unofficial) metric of DC-area fabulousness: percentage of observations reaching Research Grade!
Here are this year's global CNC major players, ranked by percentage of observations at RG. I am mostly rounding here and it changes by the minute:
Dallas/Fort Worth: 53%
San Diego: 51%
San Francisco: 43%
Washington DC: 41%
Houston: 38%
Los Angeles: 33%
Boston: 31.34%
New York: 30.81%
Cape Town: 28%
Hong Kong: 27%
Mazatlan: 26%
Tena: 9.89%
La Paz: 7.81%
Klang Valley: 5.45%
When you need a break from poison ivy, white-tailed deer and American robins, consider traveling to the ID page for Tena, la Paz or Klang Valley and taking a peek. Maybe you'll recognize a species from one of your vacations. Maybe you'll spot a garden or invasive plant that we both share. Perhaps you'll add a coarse ID like Plants or Milkweeds that will help local specialists use the filter to find what they are looking to ID. If you can confirm a few ID's, you might help them nudge their RG score up a .01 or two. At the very least, you'll come back to DC ID's with a new appreciation for how our biodiversity complements that of the rest of the world.
Now, please note that agreeing with ID's to get other's observations to RG is not a peer-pressure, groupthink kind of situation. We are not looking for people to agree just to be agreeable. If you disagree, why? If you can't confirm an ID, what aspect of the plant or animal would you like to have seen in the photo(s)? Push back politely--this is what the comment field is for, and it's how we all learn and become better observers.
For the official metrics of CNC2019, check here (no more midnight counts for me!)
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019
You'll see that while we have drifted out of the top ten for Observations and Species, we are still #4 for Observers! And who knows where we will end up by the time everything is uploaded.
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I sent this out to the DC area email group too, but for those of you who didn't see it, I'm adding the most important parts here:
If you haven't helped with identifications yet (or want to do more but are unsure how), find which of these strategies best fits your interest & abilities:
Get the unknown stuff classified broadly (currently 2000+ observations sitting in the "unknown" category). This means adding "plants" or "insects" or "birds" so others can find it more easily.
Get the stuff from a broad category into a finer category (e.g. from "Plants" to "Ferns" or "Insects" to "Lepidoptera").
Get stuff from any of these categories to species.
Confirm species-level identifications for species you know well and can distinguish from lookalikes.
Add comments to help users who may have encountered common errors (copy/paste from here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses).
Mark garden plants/captive animals as captive/cultivated if they aren't already.
Tips to remember:
-Assume people mean well, be kind, and remember everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
-Use the Identify page to work more quickly. (tutorial here: https://vimeo.com/246153496)
-Always try to add a more specific identification (i.e. if it's already identified to species, don't add something like "plants" unless you disagree it's that species).
-Don't agree blindly with other people's IDs.
-Check in daily to see updates and withdraw or correct earlier identifications if needed.
-You can turn off notifications for confirming identifications in your account settings (highly recommended to reduce a flood of uninteresting notifications)
Thanks for helping us finish strong in this last but very important phase of the City Nature Challenge! Please reach out if you have questions about identifications on iNaturalist.
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