surrey-bc_biodiversity's Journal

We are just blown away but the incredible efforts of Surrey's iNaturalist community and supporting identifiers to help verify all 2,591 observations! We have until midnight tonight to add any additional observations taken from April 24-27. Ideally all of our observations should be classified to at least Order or Family. Research grade for all submissions would be sweet but that is a Herculean task, especially with some of the less familiar plants (e.g. mosses).

Key goals for today:
Classify any remaining "unknown" species (a recent search suggests this has been done - AWESOME!)
If you are looking to refine your ID's, or help ID another observer's submission feel free to do so. Some tips to helping are to look at the range maps for a species when you bring it down to the genus (and especially) the species level. That can help you determine if you are on the right track (is it actually found here in southwest BC, or in Metro Vancouver?). Click on the organism's page info (or use the species search bar in the upper right of most pages in iNaturalist) to look at its info (photo gallery, range map, nearby sightings etc.). You can click on other local observations on the range map to see if a similar species from the family or genus you think it is has been identified, and if it was brought to Research Grade.

We will be getting the international results back from the CNC folks in California tomorrow, so stay tuned.

And remember to give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done!

If you haven't already done so, check out the efforts across Canada. This was Surrey's first year for the City Nature Challenge and we were one of two city's in BC.

Special thanks go to James Page at the Canadian Wildlife Federation (@jpage_cwf) for creating the umbrella project that coordinated Canada's efforts!

Check out the full stats through the City Nature Challenge Canada page:
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-canada-2020-defi-nature-urbaine?tab=about

The Surrey iNaturalist community and all our wonderful supporting identifiers have really outdone themselves this past week. The City Nature Challenge (Surrey's first time participating) closes at midnight tonight.

Tomorrow the international results will be posted via:
https://citynaturechallenge.org/collective-results-2020/

If you want to check out the other Canadian cities and see how we faired, check out the City Nature Challenge Canada page at:
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-canada-2020-defi-nature-urbaine?tab=about

Once the dust settles, the City of Surrey iNaturalist team will be taking a bit of a break to decompress from everything before we ramp up again with new projects.

Stay tuned for the results tomorrow!

International city totals are now posted at https://citynaturechallenge.org/collective-results-2020/. there might still be some update refresh happening but compared to some cities with double+ our population and way more observers you did good Surrey BC!

With deepest appreciation to all of you, and special thanks to our super keen specialists and experts for volunteering so much time helping with the identifications, this event wouldn't have been successful without you!

Pamela Zevit RPBio
Biodiversity Conservation Planner
City of Surrey BC

International city totals are now posted at https://citynaturechallenge.org/collective-results-2020/. there might still be some update refresh happening but compared to some cities with double+ our population and way more observers you did good Surrey BC!

With deepest appreciation to all of you, and special thanks to our super keen specialists and experts for volunteering so much time helping with the identifications, this event wouldn't have been successful without you!

Our next job is growing Surrey's iNaturalist community and making sure all this incredible biodiversity data is curated and applied in the work we do.

Pamela Zevit RPBio
Biodiversity Conservation Planner
City of Surrey BC

A special shout-out goes to the CNC organizers at the California Academy of Sciences @cas_citizen_science for their Herculean effort in moving everything along. Here is the breakdown in a lovely infographic. And while we don't have Peacock Jumping spiders here (though we do have feral Peafowl ;), we still had some pretty cool and unique finds of our own!