Welcome to Manitoba Nature!

iNaturalist is being used by a growing number of Manitobans to connect with the natural world surrounding them - we can see this in the steady increase in observers and observations over the past few years. Just a few weeks ago we crossed that significant milestone of 100,000 observations The first City Nature Challenge in the Winnipeg region was part of that effort bringing in almost 2,500 observations in just 4 days.

One of the things that stand out the strongest for me after my 5 years using this platform is the way that it enables local experts to make substantial contributions. It connects what we each know about what we observe with all our knowledge about everything alive and that is kind of huge. This project is a way for me to support you all in learning more about nature in Manitoba by sharing what I know, what resources I have on my bookshelf and can find on the internet as well as help you to connect with each other. And I will be happy to share that role with any of you that would also like to offer your expertise.

Over on iNaturalist.org, it was noted that the whole extended iNaturalist global community has now managed to upload at least one Research Grade observation of one sixth of all named species It also sets out the following ideas to further support building the data set:

  • Grow the number of observers overall, especially in remote areas
  • Grow the number of observers of rare species
  • Grow the number of specialist identifiers

Those ideas sound pretty doable to me - lets take a run at them together. The first challenge is to make this project a clearing house for knowledge about nature in Manitoba and those individuals and organizations that are involved in studying it. I will write journal posts on a regular basis - topic suggestions are always welcome - and invite people to join this project.

Looking forward to seeing what our collaboration will come up with.

Mary Krieger
St Andrews, Manitoba

Posted on June 10, 2021 04:42 PM by marykrieger marykrieger

Comments

No comments yet.

Add a Comment

Sign In or Sign Up to add comments