January 29, 2019

One Popular Fern

In Halton Region forest there is a Crested Wood Fern growing in a tree hollow. It is quite an attractive sight, and on five different occasions people have uploaded observations of this one fern!

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9621485
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13280745
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13465833
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13625458
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/17810832

Just shows how popular iNaturalist has become.

Makes me wonder what the biggest example of this is, where many people have incidentally noticed the same organism.

Posted on January 29, 2019 02:14 PM by reuvenm reuvenm | 5 comments | Leave a comment

December 18, 2018

iNaturalist observations by state/province

I was curious about what areas were over/under-represented in iNaturalist observations, so pulled together some quick data and made the following table for US/Canada.
A few things are interesting:

  • Vermont is ridiculous, but the rest of northern New England and the maritimes do very well too. But southern New England (Connecticut/Rhode Island) and Newfoundland are way down the list
  • The two jurisdictions with lowest level of use are also the two where English is not the primary language
  • My home province of Ontario does very well, with the only large jurisdictions doing better being California and Texas
State/Province Observations per 100 people Population Observations
Vermont 37.74 624594 235694
Yukon 21.21 35874 7610
Northwest Territories 10.07 41786 4207
Alaska 8.87 741894 65823
Nova Scotia 7.02 923598 64840
California 5.94 39250017 2331226
New Brunswick 5.28 747101 39445
Maine 5.25 1331479 69897
Texas 5.2 27862596 1449452
District of Columbia 5.09 681170 34660
Hawaii 4.82 1428557 68875
Prince Edward Island 4.28 142907 6113
Wyoming 4.05 585501 23721
Guam 3.91 164229 6417
New Mexico 3.78 2081015 78667
Ontario 3.72 13448494 500036
Oregon 3.57 4093465 146163
Arizona 3.53 6931071 244353
New Hampshire 3.11 1334795 41567
Maryland 3 6016447 180367
North Carolina 2.81 10146788 285446
Washington 2.81 7288000 204504
Ohio 2.76 11614373 319993
Montana 2.72 1042520 28317
Alabama 2.69 4863300 130938
Massachusetts 2.66 6811779 181528
Virginia 2.66 8411808 223623
British Columbia 2.6 4648055 120750
Colorado 2.44 5540545 134995
Idaho 2.36 1683140 39687
Minnesota 2.3 5519952 127092
Utah 2.25 3051217 68503
Delaware 2.05 952065 19507
Nunavut 2.02 35944 727
New York 1.95 19745289 384707
Louisiana 1.92 4681666 89816
Wisconsin 1.86 5778708 107505
Nevada 1.8 2940058 52874
West Virginia 1.78 1831102 32554
New Jersey 1.72 8944469 153888
Tennessee 1.72 6651194 114216
Oklahoma 1.65 3923561 64826
Connecticut 1.64 3576452 58714
Illinois 1.63 12801539 208886
Florida 1.63 20612439 335157
Pennsylvania 1.58 12784227 201925
Arkansas 1.5 2988248 44728
Manitoba 1.44 1278365 18445
Saskatchewan 1.41 1098352 15459
Michigan 1.38 9928300 137418
Newfoundland and Labrador 1.38 519716 7189
South Dakota 1.37 865454 11846
South Carolina 1.33 4961119 66013
Rhode Island 1.15 1056426 12164
Mississippi 1.15 2988726 34257
Missouri 1.1 6093000 67145
Kansas 1.04 2907289 30238
Kentucky 1 4436974 44207
Indiana 0.98 6633053 64779
North Dakota 0.93 757952 7018
Alberta 0.9 4067175 36733
Nebraska 0.79 1907116 15083
Georgia 0.71 10310371 73359
Iowa 0.65 3134693 20520
Quebec 0.5 8164361 40555
Puerto Rico 0.42 3411307 14157

And on a map (dunno why Nunavut and Prince Edward Island are all screwed up)

Posted on December 18, 2018 01:05 AM by reuvenm reuvenm | 1 comment | Leave a comment

July 1, 2018

Halfway Done, Almost There

At the beginning of the year I posted on my external blog about my goal to photograph 1000 species for iNaturalist in Ontario in 2018. At the time, I thought this would be a bit of a challenge. We're now sitting exactly halfway through the year, and I wanted to write a quick post about how it's turning out. Here's my numbers up to June 30:

602 plants
172 birds
53 dragonflies and damselflies
38 butterflies
19 mammals
13 amphibians
12 reptiles
23 other organisms (fungi, fish, various insects, etc.)

For a total of 932 species!

It turns out I seriously overestimated how difficult this would be. I think the main surprise is how many species of plants there are. It doesn't really feel like I've seen over 600 species of plants this year, but the numbers don't lie.

So what's next? I'll probably hit the 1000 species mark in the next week or two depending on how much effort I put in. Past that, I expect I'll finish the year somewhere between 1200 and 1300 species.

I've made this same post on my external blog and included photos of some my favourite sightings of the year:
http://reuvenmartin.blogspot.com/2018/06/halfway-done-almost-there.html

Posted on July 1, 2018 12:05 AM by reuvenm reuvenm | 1 comment | Leave a comment

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