Good morning AppState BioBlitzers! The game's on! Our BioBlitz project is now in progress. No observations yet (it's still dark out there) but I'm sure there will be plenty coming in today. I wonder who will be the first to post an observation, and what will it be?
Remember we will have a group outing to the Greenway this afternoon from 4-6 PM. There are still some slots available if you need a shuttle ride from Rankin. For other places to visit, also check out the videos that were posted in previous journal entries.
For those who didn't make it to any of our training sessions last week, here's a list of questions that were asked that might be of interest:
What is the best way to tell whether a species is Cultivated or not?
The definition of captive/cultivated on iNaturalist is that the organism "exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there." So anything that was planted by humans is cultivated. However, if a plant came up on its own, e.g. a garden plant self-seeding outside of its original area, it is considered wild. The iNaturalist Help pages have some examples what is considered wild vs. captive/cultivated. For trees on campus, you can check out the ASU Tree Inventory to get an idea which trees are planted/managed by the university.
Do invasive/ non-native species count?
Yes, definitely! It's actually quite important to track these on iNaturalist for people who study how invasives are spreading. We will probably find a few at the Greenway this afternoon.
Does iNaturalist alert you when you are outside the boundaries, if not, how can you tell?
No, unfortunately it doesn't alert you. You can check whether your observation was within the boundaries by checking its location info on iNaturalist. It should come up as "Appalachian State University" and if you open up the Details underneath the map on the web interface, it should list "Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, US (Point of interest)" under Community Curated.
Can you take a photo with a big camera with a zoom and upload it onto iNaturalist?
Yes, absolutely! I take most of my pictures with a camera and upload through the web interface. The disadvantage is that I have no GPS coordinates and have to put the location in manually by placing a pin on the map. When we talked about this at the session, we decided it would be smart to create the observation using the phone app to get the time/location automatically and add the zoomed camera images later. There is a brief tutorial video on the iNaturalist help pages demonstrating how to do this via the web interface.
What does it mean that sound recordings are also allowed in addition to photos?
It means just that: You can use a sound file (e.g. bird/frog/katydid calls) in place of a photo as evidence for the organism. They have to be in wav, mp3, or m4a format. You can record using the phone app, or extract a sound file from video taken with a camera.
Are we allowed to bait/collect?
Yes, birds at feeders, moths attracted to light, or fish you're catching are all valid observations for iNaturalist. Collections done for class (e.g. water or leaf litter samples for microscopy, plants for the herbarium, mushrooms for spore prints, insects for entomology collections) are also fine. Just be mindful of not harming any wildlife in order to get observations and refrain from collecting vertebrates without a permit. The date and location should reflect when and where you collected, not where the microscope or storage space for the collection is located. The easiest way to do this is probably to create the observation of what you are sampling while out in the field, and add the microscopy images to it later.
