Successful Pilot Foray

So, this weekend (30-Sep-2023) we held a "pilot" foray in Elk Island National Park for board members of the Friends of Elk Island Society and a few invited guests. Martin Osis (past president of the Alberta Mycological Society) was on hand to validate our mushroom IDs. The weather cooperated and it was a good day, although the mushrooms were not plentiful. Everyone had fun and it was a worthwhile introduction to the project.

There were a few lessons to be learned from this pilot, namely:

1. The project admin can't add photos to the observations, only the owner of the observation can do that. If I take additional photos for documentary reasons we will need to find a way to add those to the observation. Maybe upload them to the AMS site and then just add a link in the comments?
2. It's time consuming to review all the observations and add the iNat numbers to the vouchers after the event. We should encourage participants to include the iNat number. (It's hard for folks who are new to all of this!)
3. Many vouchers were missing data - it's important that the vouchers are completed properly as the vouchers are considered to be our "source documents".
4. Some otherwise complete vouchers didn't have a species filled in. I'm not sure why this was. Perhaps these specimens were duplicate collections and so of lesser value so never got an ID. It's ok to focus our efforts on the most valuable/interesting specimens but we should have a clear protocol for selecting those specimens.
5. There is value to all the observations, but only a subset will end up being documented in the formal project database.

Thank you everyone who came out and participated. I hope you all had fun.

Posted on October 2, 2023 04:02 AM by rickwatts