San Mateo County Bio-Blitz's Journal

Journal archives for October 2017

October 28, 2017

MROSD - Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District - Help their project along!

Many of us in the county are regular visitors to the many splendid Open Space Preserves managed by MROSD. But only a handful of people are aware of the MROSD's project here on iNaturalist, the Midpen Biodiversity Project:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/midpen-biodiversity-index

A few noteworthy things about this project. They request that you give the age and health status (dead, alive, or injured) of your observations, when possible. Secondly, they include sightings from within their preserves mainly, but will accept any from their "sphere of influence" - an area that spans San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, with a tiny dash of Santa Cruz county as well. Me, personally, I've only been including sightings from the OSPs and their immediate surroundings. But here's the map MROSD maintains of its sphere of influence, which also includes the names, locations and boundaries of the various preserves:

https://www.openspace.org/preserves
https://www.openspace.org/sites/default/files/district_map.pdf

The way to enter your pre-existing entries into the project is a bit time-consuming, but still fun. First, join the MidPen project. Then, use the iNaturalist "Places" tab, and enter the name of a MROSD preserve you know you've visited and iNat-ted. Once you've located that "Place" in iNaturalist's data base, go to the "People" tab on that page, find your name, and click on the observation number you've made. Then do a Batch Edit, and add these entries to the Midpen project.

Here's the list of Midpen preserves in San Mateo county
Coal Creek
El Corte de Madera Creek
La Honda (limited access)
Long Ridge (sections in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz)
Los Trancos (sections in Santa Clara)
Miramontes Ridge (currently very limited access)
Monte Bello (just tiny fractions in San Mateo; mostly Santa Clara)
Pulgas Ridge
Purisima Creek Redwoods
Ravenswood
Russian Ridge
Skyline Ridge
Teague Hill (very limited access)
Thornewood
Tunitas Creek (currently no access)
Windy Hill

Sequoia Audubon and MROSD will be discussing future opportunities for conducting BIO-BLITZES on Midpen properties - stay tuned!

Thanks to @wyattherp for setting up the project!

Posted on October 28, 2017 04:37 PM by gyrrlfalcon gyrrlfalcon | 5 comments | Leave a comment