Tool Tip: Add Details About Your Sighting

We're all excited to add as many sightings of as many organisms as we can. Who doesn't want to be on top of the leader board? But slow down and think about all the sightings you are entering and what someone might want to know about them today, in a decade, or even 50 years from now.

With iNaturalist you can add more details to your sightings relatively easily when you add new observations or by editing those you already have. Take a look at the bottom of the observation entry page. There is a box titled, "More fields". In fact, there are five pages of more fields available to the user and the ability to add new fields if needed. Check them out at http://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields?page=1.

Some of my favorite fields revolve around phenology, the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and inter-annual variations in climate, like flowering or leaf out. Select "Flower Phenology" and you can indicate if the plant was bare, flowering or had fruit. Select "Leaf Phenology" and indicate the status of deciduous trees and shrubs - is the plant leafing out, fully leafed out, showing fall foliage color, or bare?

Quantity is important, but so is quality. Adding more information to your sightings will make them even more valuable in the future.

Publicado el junio 16, 2015 12:53 TARDE por kpmcfarland kpmcfarland

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And to those who want to beat my record on the leaderboard I should confess I've been on this site for about two years... so I had quite a substantial head start :)

I should update more fields for some of my old observations. After all it's too cold to use the iPhone much this time of year anyway!

Publicado por charlie hace alrededor de 11 años

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