iNaturalist is a free app you can download if interested you’re in participating in this project.
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We don’t email you like this very often, but we wanted to be sure you know about a worldwide event coming up from May 15th to the 25th. This Friday is the beginning of an 11-day Global Snapshot of Biodiversity for National Geographic’s Great Nature Project. We hope you’ll get out and make observations to contribute to this project!
What is the Global Snapshot of Biodiversity? Think of it as a global bioblitz, or a global “big week” to collaboratively document as many species as we can across the globe. The Snapshot is set up to automatically count every iNaturalist observation made during that window, and our collaborators at National Geographic will be promoting the effort through their Great Nature Project portal into the iNaturalist community. So all you have to do is get out and make some iNaturalist observations! But if you want to show your support for the Great Nature Project please join that project as well. We’re hoping to repeat this event each year to see how the frequency of species changes and how our naturalist community grows.
Currently, our group observing power on iNaturalist over an 11 day period is generating about 25,000 observations, representing about 5,500 species from the participation of about 2,000 people. About 10,000 of those are “research grade” and en route to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility for use by scientists. How much do you think we can increase this during the Snapshot? We’re excited to find out, but in the meantime get out your camera and get outside and let’s see how many species we can tally this year!
Have fun exploring,
Scott Loarie & Ken-ichi Ueda
iNaturalist Co-Directors
Institute for Biodiversity Science & Sustainability
California Academy of Sciences