General

1. What is iNaturalist?

   iNaturalist provides a place to record and organize nature findings, meet other nature enthusiasts, and learn about the natural world. It encourages the participation of a wide variety of nature enthusiasts, including, but not exclusive to, hikers, hunters, birders, beach combers, mushroom foragers, park rangers, ecologists, and fishermen. Through connecting these different perceptions and expertise of the natural world, iNaturalist hopes to create extensive community awareness of local biodiversity and promote further exploration of local environments.

2. Who is behind iNaturalist?

   iNaturalist is the Master's Final Project of Nathan Agrin, Jessica Kline, and Ken-ichi Ueda at UC Berkeley's School of Information.

3. What technologies and data sources does the project use?

   iNaturalist is built using Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Prototype and Script.aculo.us, Google Maps, and Flickr. It also utilizes the Catalogue of Life and U.S. Census 2000 data sources for taxonomic and location data.

4. What can I do to help iNaturalist?

   You can help iNaturalist by giving us your feedback; join our Google group to sign up for usability studies, report bugs, and request new features. You can also help iNaturalist by adding your observations and helping other community members identify their unidentified observations.

5. How do I contact iNaturalist?

   You can contact us at inaturalist@gmail.com

Observations

1. What is an observation?

   An observation is the what, where, and when of a finding in nature. iNaturalist provides a place to add this information along with associated text, photos, and tags. iNaturalist encourages the recording of all nature findings, whether they feature identified species or simple narrative descriptions. (In iNaturalist the same lizard can be described as a Desert Horned Lizard as well as "Mystery Lizard of Death Valley".)

2. Why doesn't iNaturalist recognize the name I've entered?

   iNaturalist has name information for mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and continues to add new species names into our database. If we do not recognize a particular name, try alternative names that we might recognize and add the original name to the tags or description fields.

3. How can I get help identifying what I saw?

   iNaturalist is currently implementing a feature to help you identify your unidentified observations. Check back soon for more details.

4. What does it mean to link iNaturalist to my Flickr account?

   iNaturalist can link directly to the Flickr photo service so that you can add your Flickr photos to your observations. When you agree to link your Flickr account, you are simply linking two accounts; we do not have access to your Flickr password and you are not forsaking your copyright nor giving us the ability to use any of your photos in ways that you do not want.

5. Can I add photos without a Flickr account?

   While iNaturalist only links directly to the Flickr photo service, you can still add photos to your observation without a Flickr account. First identify the url of your photo and then paste the following image html into the description field: <img src="url">.

6. What are tags?

   Tags are keywords you can add to an observation to make them easier to find. For example, if a barracuda followed you on a scuba diving trip in Turks and Caicos, you might tag the observation "scary, barracuda, scuba diving, vacation, turks and caicos".

Lists

1. What is a life list?

   A life list is a list of every species that you have seen. Every iNaturalist user has a life list and these lists are automatically populated from the observations added to iNaturalist.

2. I observed a species, why isn't it showing up in my life list?

   While the life list is automatically populated from added observations, the species will not be added to this list if iNaturalist does not recognize the name you used. We recommend trying alternative names that we might recognize.