City Nature Challenge 2019: Washington DC Metro Area's Journal

We're up to 50+ events now scheduled for this year's City Nature Challenge in and around Washington DC. This includes outdoor events like guided walks, bioblitzes, and walk the park events; iNaturalist trainings, and ID parties! Find out more at https://citynaturechallengedc.org/ .

Welcome to new event organizers @onertwons @etotin @bertharris @runcator and others! Thank you for creating venues where people can discover the capabilities of iNaturalist, explore nature, and learn from each other.

For those who prefer to explore on their own, I'd like to point out that many of our most prolific observers from last year went out solo or close to it--not as part of organized events. We hope you will be able to participate in CNC-DC again this year. Let us know how we can support you! @mellis @rock_flipper @lisam @ashley_bradford @jmgconsult @botanygirl @arbiess @philklingelhofer @jacobogre @calopteryx @rhondaridley and so many others!

We're working extra-hard to clean up last year's IDs though pre-CNC ID parties and to build a skilled local iNat user base with pre-CNC iNat trainings.
See All iNat trainings here .

This year we hope to help the local iNat community do a great job keeping up with all your observations and getting ID's confirmed before the deadline of May 5!
See all Identification parties here.

Let us know how we can help you love participating in CNC-DC 2019!

CNC-DC 2019 Planning Group:
Carrie Seltzer @carrieseltzer
Stella Tarnay @stella20009
Ana Kaahanui @ana_kaahanui
Robert Costello @kearins
Jeanne Chang
Megan Whatton @megan_whatton
Chelsea Mervenne
Bridget Moynihan @letsfindmegalodon
Deborah Barber @dbarber

The organizers for CNC-DC 2019 are serious about improving our data quality for DC. To that end, we have scheduled several pre-CNC events focused on CNC-DC 2018 observations. If you are able to attend, you'll accomplish a lot:

--You will learn how to use the iNaturalist website and identification interface.
--You will become familiar with the organisms and phenology you are likely to see during CNC.
--You will advance identification skills of DC participants.
--You will improve the local 2018 CNC data.
Bonus 1: We will increase the number of images and taxa used to train the computer vision model--which results in better computer ID's for everyone!
Bonus 3: Reviewing others' hard-to-identify observations makes us all better and more careful observers.
Bonus 3: You will eat pizza!

The next ID party is just a week away, Thursday, February 28 at National Geographic, 1610 M St NW, Washington DC, 5:30 - 8pm.

Register Here!