White Mountains Workshop 2019's Journal

July 16, 2019

Long live the 2019 Workshop!

Our Jepson Herbarium Weekend Workshop was over all too soon, but the memories and the observations live on.

It was a downright privilege to meet (or meet again) and spend the weekend with all of you in my most favorite botanical stomping ground and general hang-out.

Welcome to honorary workshop members @kueda, @sea-kangaroo, and @matsonburger, and to participant @odsmaker whose username I didn't have earlier. Let me know if I missed any other iNaturalist members among the group.

And keep those observations rolling in! They are a great way to review what we saw and learned (both separately and collectively), and to re-live a wonderful weekend. I expanded the project dates to include the weekends before and after the workshop, since I know some of you were in the area longer than just the workshop dates. Anything you observe by next Monday the 22nd will still be included. And I'll be catching up and adding a few of my own observations to the mix soon.

For an expanded tour of the Vascular Flora of the White Mountains, you can always start exploring with:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=129416&subview=grid&taxon_id=211194

...or see everything here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/places/white-mountains-flora-ca-nv-official-boundary

Happy Trails to each and all of you.

Posted on July 16, 2019 11:03 PM by jdmore jdmore | 0 comments | Leave a comment

July 10, 2019

Tips for using the iNaturalist phone app while in the White Mountains

You may just wish to save your photo observations until after the workshop, and then upload them via the web uploader at https://www.inaturalist.org at your convenience. I use the web uploader 99%+ of the time -- much easier and more functional for me.

You are also encouraged to use the phone app during the workshop if you wish. For best results, I recommend the following:

1. If you have a strong cell signal or wi-fi connection, then go for it, and ignore the rest of these suggestions! Once you leave the bottom of Owens Valley, however, you will likely have neither of these (except possibly slow wi-fi at night at the Research Station).

2. Go into the app settings, and set Auto Sync to OFF. That way your phone won't waste battery and resources trying to upload without a signal, or end up with broken observations due to signal interruptions. There is a button to manually upload your accumulated observations whenever you have a reliable signal, and have finished adding IDs or other information to them.

3. Put your phone in Airplane Mode. This will again keep your battery from draining while trying to find a non-existent cell signal.

4. If possible, run a GPS app of some kind in the background. I use "GPS Status" but there are many others you can download for free. Or you can run something like Google Maps, though the battery drain might go up a bit (make sure it doesn't try to take you out of Airplane Mode though!). PURPOSE: any of these will help keep your phone's GPS actively obtaining satellite fixes, so that every picture you take has a good accurate location embedded in it.

5. If super-accurate locations are a concern at any time, note that you can manually "obscure" any or all of your observations. You will still see the true coordinates, but all other users will see a random point within a large rectangle about 22km x 22km. Or you can make location completely private, and no location of any kind will be visible to other users. For the scientific value of the observations, I recommend not obscuring locations unless necessary for your own privacy, or for the privacy of the organism you observed!

6. Got a great signal, ready to upload accumulated observations again? Just tap the manual Sync Observations button. No need to go back and change your app settings. In fact I recommend just leaving Auto Sync off permanently, so that you always have control over when things upload.

Posted on July 10, 2019 08:28 PM by jdmore jdmore | 0 comments | Leave a comment

Welcome to the 2019 Sky Island Flora of the White Mountains workshop project!

@dylan_neubauer @catchang @lynn2 @annalarsen @rawlingstimby @fredsproul

I think you are the 2019 workshop participants who have iNaturalist accounts at the moment. But please message me if you are the wrong person, or just don't want to be a part of the project, and I'll remove you.

This is a collection project, so any and all observations (not just plants!) seen between July 10 and July 15, 2019, within the White Mountains boundary, will automatically be included -- you don't need to do anything else. They can be posted at any time during or after these dates.

If you also want to receive project update notifications, etc., you can also specifically "join" the project -- see the main page (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/white-mountains-workshop-2019).

Looking forward to a great weekend in the White Mountains!

Jim Morefield (@jdmore)

Posted on July 10, 2019 07:52 PM by jdmore jdmore | 0 comments | Leave a comment

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