City Nature Challenge 2023: Hull's Journal

We're delighted to announce that the City Nature Challenge will be returning to Hull in 2024! Following the success of the 2023 event, Hull is signed up to take part again this year. Our aim remains the same: to collect important data on the wildlife around Hull and encourage the public to discover the wealth of flora and fauna on their doorstep.

This year, the event recording period will run over the weekend of the 26th - 29th April 2024.

As with the 2023 CNC, events will be held across Hull during the recording weekend. Information on these events and the organisations taking part will be updated on the NEYEDC website in due course: www.neyedc.org.uk/hull-cnc-2023

Keep your eyes peeled for the 2024 Hull City Nature Challenge project on iNaturalist.

Save the date and join us!

Hello everyone,

The results are now in for the City Nature Challenge 2023 and as you can see from the graphic attached it has been another fantastic year for the global City Nature Challenge with 46 countries taking part and some 1.9 Million observations covering 57,200 species being recorded globally over the four day recording period. The most observed species globally was the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos).

Hull’s results are available to view here on the iNaturalist Project page and include 4180 observations of some 854 species being observed by a very committed group of over 60 observers. The majority of observations were of plants (53.58%) with birds (7.87%), amphibians (0.35%) and Mammals (0.94%), whilst insects made up 23.62% these included many species of flies, bees, bugs and butterflies including the Common Brimstone which is one of Hull’s priority species.

This is a fantastic achievement by all concerned and Hull has definitely punched above its weight (globally and nationally) in terms of observations made and species recorded for its area and the number of participants. Hull did remarkably well in the UK for its first year of participation, coming a very respectable 7th in the UK.

The team here at NEYEDC would once more like to thank you all for being involved.

Robin

Wow! What a fantastic result, well done team Hull.

The team here at NEYEDC would just like to thank everyone who has taken part in the Hull City Nature Challenge 2023. We hoped you have enjoyed it as much as we have.

The (current) totals for the project are an amazing 4,085 observations of 832 different species, which gives an amazing insight into what is living in the city. If you have been making observations but are not using iNaturalist you can send your records to NEYEDC and we can upload them - mark them as Hull CNC 2023 records and email them to info@neyedc.co.uk.

Can help with identification, do you see a photo or hear a sound clip that is not marked as 'RG' and know what it is? There are a number of observations which require identifying in order to reach Research Grade (RG)* and these will ultimately filter through to the national and international biodiversity databases such as the UK's NBN Atlas and GBIF. It would be really helpful if you could look at the image and accept it. We have until Sunday 7th May to get the data identified and verified before results officially are announced on Monday 8th May.

• Casual records (no image or sound clip) cannot reach Research Grade in iNaturalist.

On a personal note, I found the whole data collection / observation part really enjoyable (and slightly addictive) and organising the Hull City Nature Challenge has been a real labour of love.

Thanks again,

Kind regards,

Robin and the NEYEDC team.

Hello everyone,

We've been impressed with the fantastic start and progress of the Hull City Nature Challenge and we have some great species recorded. We are currently lying in 5th place out of the 22 UK cities and regions taking part for the number of species observed - keep up the good work in the time we have left!

We have had a report of some observations not appearing in the project despite being recorded within the Hull city boundary. We think the issue lies with the participants GPS signal on their device. If you suspect this may have happened, you can edit the location of each missing observation by moving the 'target' to the correct location and re-saving. Any problems please drop us a line and we'll do our best to help (info@neyedc.co.uk).

The NEYEDC team.

A final update from myself and the NEYEDC organising team on the Hull 2023 City Nature Challenge.

There are officially 485 cities/ regions across 46 countries taking part in the City Nature Challenge in 2023.

The international organisers have also released a couple of links for support over the CNC period-

For FAQ’s on the city Nature Challenge itself please visit- https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/faq

For any issues/ queries with iNaturalist go to- City Nature Challenge category on the iNaturalist forum or About the Using iNaturalist with the City Nature Challenge category - Using iNaturalist with the City Nature Challenge - iNaturalist Community Forum.

They’ve also reiterated the need to encourage participants to only collect records for wild plants and animals, if the observation is thought to be a captive/ cultivated organism this can be noted in the Data Quality Assessment section on the iNaturalist app.

Let’s get some fantastic ecological data for Hull!

Results for the International City Nature Challenge event will be released at around 3pm on the 8th of May by the International organisers, however due to the extra bank holiday in the UK, NEYEDC will be releasing our notifications at a slightly later date.

Thanks,

Robin and the NEYEDC team.

Today we have an excellent blog post from Giselle Sterry of iNaturalist UK which contains some handy tips for iNaturalist users-

https://uk.inaturalist.org/blog/77691-are-you-city-nature-challenge-ready

Please find some guidelines we are asking participants to use to enhance the data flow of Hull CNC 23.

User settings- Display Name.

To aide verification please ensure your Display name is set to your actual name-

Menu- edit profile- display name (face icon).

What licence should be used for UK observations?

In line with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility’s (GBIF) approach to data licensing (https://www.gbif.org/news/82363/new-approaches-to-data-licensing-and-endorsement) the NBN Atlas (the UK repository) and iRecord require that all iNaturalist data shared to them are on one of three licences:

• CC0;
• CC-BY or
• CC-BY-NC.

Why does it matter?

If your observation is not licensed with one of these three licences it can’t be pooled together with other UK data sets allowing us to build up a full picture of the UK’s biodiversity. It will also not be passed to GBIF by iNaturalist as part of their regular exports. To make sure that scientists and conservationists are permitted to use your wildlife data records (and to inform local decision making), you will need to check your iNaturalist default licence settings are set up correctly. To check which licence is attached to your observations:

The ideal is that all observations are licensed as CC0 or CC-BY. However, we recognise that this may not be appropriate for all users for all observations.

• Selecting "CC0" will allow your record to be used by anyone in any way. This allows it to be of most use by scientists & other organisations.
• Selecting "CC BY" allows anyone to copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the material, but ensures you’re credited as the owner of the record. Both of these settings will also allow for your records to be shared with other UK datasets, such as the NBN atlas and Local Environmental Records Centres (including NEYEDC here in Hull).

(https://uk.inaturalist.org/blog/58298-licensed-to-share).

Thanks,

The Hull CNC 23 team.

A number of local organisations are working with NEYEDC to deliver the Hull City Nature Challenge 2023 including staff from Hull City Council, Hull Culture and Leisure Ltd and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust as well as staff and students from University of Hull; specialists from The Deep and members of Friends of Alderman Kneeshaw Park, Hull Natural History Society, Butterfly City, Child Dynamix, Friends of Pickering Park and the Pearson Park Trust.

Hull CNC 23 is taking place 28th April- 1st May, It's looking like it's going to be a fantastic event! 😀

For more information visit- https://www.neyedc.org.uk/hull-cnc-2023

or email events@neyedc.co.uk

As the local Environmental Records Centre, NEYEDC hold the species data records for the city of Hull, some of these records date from 1987 and provide an indication of some of the possible observations you may find over the City Nature Challenge event. Some of these records include-

21 records for Common Toad (Bufo bufo)
4 records for European Otter (Lutra lutra)
55 records for Great Crested Newt (Triturus cristatus)
11 records for Skylark (Alauda arvensis)
1 record for Long- eared Owl (Asio otus)
70 records for Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)
3 records for Alder Buckthorn (Frangula alnus)

The records from the City Nature Challenge will present an excellent update to the records for the city and will enable local authorities and communities to be better informed as to what species are present in the city and how they can be appreciated and ultimately conserved.

In time with the launch of the Hull City Nature Challenge 2023, the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) have released a perfectly timed article highlighting the benefits of getting outside and exploring the natural world.

The article highlights the benefits to science through citizen science events such as City Nature Challenge as well as the benefits to personal health and wellbeing of the participants. A true win win!

Read the article here- https://www.ceh.ac.uk/press/wildlife-recording-good-people-well-science