Martha's Vineyard Atlas of Life Website Launch
Comrades - I'm happy to announce that the Martha's Vineyard Atlas of Life (MVAL) website has just been launched at mval.biodiversityworksmv.org. A collaboration between BiodiversityWorks and the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation, the MVAL is a community-driven catalog of Vineyard biodiversity that seeks to inspire and support a community to study, appreciate, and protect the Island's natural heritage. The new website pulls together current and historical wildlife records, natural history and conservation news, and resources for nature study on the Vineyard. The site will grow over time, and if you have suggestions for improvements or materials to add, please let me know either via an iNat message or by email at mpelikan@biodiversityworksmv.org.
The MVAL committed early on to using iNaturalist as a main source of information, and the observations that all of you have submitted to iNat are readily accessible from the MVAL website through links to the MVAL iNat project and saved searches accessed from many groups in our "Species Lists" section. The site strongly encourages iNat usage, and future group treatments in our "Species Lists" section will rely extensively on iNat data. (I hope to get a Hemiptera section and treatments of the fly taxa Syrphidae and Asiloidea up on the website over the next few months.)
I hope you'll have time to check out the new site, and that you find it useful and interesting. Thanks for the contributions you've made to iNat and the MVAL project, and keep on observing!
-Matt Pelikan
