P.S., try not to leave your observation "unknown"

One of our identifiers comments reminded me to remind everyone to try to categorize your observations to some degree rather than leaving it as unknown. "If you don't know the specific species you've observed, it's helpful to identify as far as you are confident when you upload it, even if it's only very coarse/general ( e.g. 'birds', 'mammals', 'plants'), instead of leaving an observation as 'unknown'. This way, it is more likely to come to the attention of people with specialised knowledge. More info from https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#coarse-ids: "Why do people keep adding 'obvious' IDs like 'Plants' or 'Fungi'? By adding a coarse ID of 'Plants' or 'Fungi' these identifiers are making it easier for other people to find your observation. Many experts use our taxonomic filters to focus on their taxon of expertise, so if you post an observation of a plant with no identification, these experts will never find it."

As part of the Herculean task of curating Surrey's iNaturalist observations, we have close to 4000 casual observations to try to improve like unknowns, or "something" or ones without even a photo. iNaturalist's recognition software isn't perfect and we know a number of incorrect ID's get magnified because they get verified to research grade and then show up as visually similar/seen nearby. Fortunately 90% of Surrey's 40,000 or so observations are research grade (~50%) or improving/need ID (~49%), which is lightyears better than when we started back in 2019, which is due in no small part to all the dedicated identifiers and observers out there!

Posted on April 30, 2022 08:01 PM by surrey-bc_biodiversity