Day Three, Part Two: Increasing the Value of Your iNat Observations Using Projects
Much of the fun of iNaturalist is contributing to projects, such as the City Nature Challenge, but there are hundreds of other projects out there to which you can contribute, and you probably already are without knowing it. Entering observations gives implicit permission for "umbrella" projects, like the City Nature Challenge, to harvest those observations. (That was in the fine print you didn't read when you joined iNat.)
Umbrella projects are the most common types of projects and are used for things like park lists, bio-blitzes, faunal inventories, and the like. "Traditional" projects, which are less common nowadays, are more complex and require special permission to set up, have additional features, and can be opted into and out of. I'll mention one of those later on.
So, why should you participate in an umbrella project? Well, you can follow it, and you can get notification of events and journal posts, like this one. You can follow it and see what others have contributed. To find projects, go to "Community" in the top menu and select "Projects." You can search by keywords. "Brazos" brings up 63, "texas" brings up 1,700, and "birds" brings up 7,458! If you took the TMN training in the last couple years, you can search "txmnbv ento" to find the project I set up to track your entomology homework! You may already see projects such as "Birds of Texas" or "Plants of Texas" sprouting up in the projects list for your observations.
So, what are some local projects you might be interested in? How about:
Ants of Brazos County
Brazos County Managed Pollinator Host Plants
Butterflies in the Brazos
Madison County, Texas, Flora and Fauna (broke 1,000 species today--yippee!!)
Rio Brazos Turtles
TAMU-ENRTA Property Inventory
Texas A&M University Campus Biodiversity
There have also been set up 13 Park Biota projects to aid in the Bird City Application for the City of College Station. The parks are: Bee Creek, Brison, Brothers Pond, Gabbard, Hensel, John Crompton, Lemon Tree, Lick Creek, Schob (Nature Center), Southwood Community Center and Bachman, Stephen C. Beachy Central, Veterans, and Wolf Pen Creek. Observations in these parks form a database that will support the City's application. You don't have to tag your observations--they've already been added. Retroactively! There is also a catch-all Biota of College Station project with 62, 315 observations of 4,251 species by 2,457 observers!
What about some of those 1,700 Texas-based projects? How about:
Alligators of Texas
Beetles of Texas
Birds of the Texas State Parks
Cacti of Texas
Crayfishes of Texas
Fire Ants of Texas
Fungi of Texas
Herps of Texas
Insects of Texas
Moths of Texas
Native Texas Organisms
Natural Bird Hybrids of Texas
Oaks of Texas
Plants of Texas
Raptors of Texas
Roadkills of Texas
Terrestrial Mollusks of Texas
Texas Endemic Species
Texas Invasives
Texas Milkweeds and Monarchs
Texas National Wildlife Refuges
Texas Nature Tracker Projects
Texas Odonata
Texas Seasahells
Texas Wildflower Watch
and 1,675 others!
I mentioned a "traditional" project that you should consider joining. Do you know those Great Texas Wildlife Trail maps you see at the State Parks and such? They were last updated around 2018 and some are older than that. TPWD has ONE QUARTER-TIME PERSON to update 9 maps, nearly 400 loops, and several thousand sites! They've asked Master Naturalists to help, but anybody can join and "play." They are also trying to include all flora and fauna of the sites, not just birds and butterflies. You do need to join this project. It is "GTWT Adopt-a-Loop." When adding observations to the project, you need to scroll down on the right side to "Observation Fields, type in "Place of Observation (site number)" or enough for it to auto-fill, then enter the site number. Our site numbers are:
PPWW 008 Lick Creek Park
PPWW 009 D.A. “Andy” Anderson Arboretum
PPWW 011 Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History
PPWW 012 Lake Bryan
PPWW 013A Apache Pass (removed, no public access)
PPWW 013B Frances Nabours Griffin Bird Sanctuary, Wilson Ledbetter Park
PPWW 014 Rosebud City Lake (removed, no public access)
[PPWW is the "Prairies and Pineywoods West" map] Other site numbers can be found at the interactive online map at https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wildlife/wildlife-trails/ If you observed in any of these sites during the Challenge, please consider joining AAL and adding your observations. This project does NOT harvest retroactively, but you can use batch edit to add multiple observations from a given trip or retroactively.
Hope you'll consider adding additional value to your observations using multiple projects.
Bruce
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