Namibia - iNaturalist World Tour

We're in Namibia for the 52nd stop on the iNaturalist World Tour where we've arrived from nearby Botswana. The top observer here is @alexdreyer based out of the arid Maltahöhe district of Namibia south of Windhoek. The locations of people on the map below (which represents the centroid of their observations within a bounding box around Namibia) is a bit misleading here since people covered so much ground. For example, @martin_weigand activity is centered west of Windhoek but his observations are actually distributed up and down the Western half of Namibia. @peter_erb and @wolfachim's observations are in a grand arc from the Caprivi, through Etosha National Park and south to Windhoek. @jurga_li's observations range from Etosha National Park in the north down to the southern tip of the country. You can get a sense for what Etosha has to offer from this Observation of the Week post featuring a waterhole sighting by @jerrythornton. Etosha is relatively arid but is still a woodland ecosystem typical of much of the African savannah. In contrast, this Observation of the Week post about a @Peringuey’s Adder sighting by @robert_taylor gives a sense for the more arid parts of the country among the dunes not far from Walvis Bay.



The number of observations per month has been ticking up since 2017 roughly following whats happening in Botswana. I suspect the drivers are also similar which I speculated about in the Botswana post yesterday. Like in Botswana, the Southern African community that moved to iNat from iSpot a few years ago appears to be the source of most of the activity from Namibia.



@alexdreyer holds both the top observer and top identifer positions, he also leads in half of the categories including plants and insects. @alanhorstmann is the second top identifier and leads in birds and mammals. Thanks to other top identifiers in Namibia such as @tonyrebelo, @colin25, @martin_weigand, @wynand_uys, and @johnnybirder!



What can we do to get more people using iNaturalist in Namibia? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread

@alexdreyer @martin_weigand @peter_erb @wolfachim @jurga_li @colin25 @happyasacupcake @alanhorstmann @tonyrebelo @johnnybirder

We’ll be back tomorrow in Honduras!

Posted on August 14, 2019 08:24 PM by loarie loarie

Comments

Namibia also has an official atlas: http://www.the-eis.com/atlas/ - I dont know the politics of it in relation to iNaturalist, or how popular it is.

Posted by tonyrebelo over 4 years ago

Add a Comment

Sign In or Sign Up to add comments