Texas leaderboard and Global leaderboard! And the link to ID'ing stuff from DFW

Hey all,

Just a few pages to also watch...

Here's the Texas leaderboard:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/texas-city-nature-challenge-2022-cities

Here's the global leaderboard:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022

Here's the page where you can help with the DFW observations during the City Nature Challenge:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=124378
(it populates after the City Nature Challenge starts)

Hope you have lots of chances to engage with nature this weekend! Enjoy it!!!

Posted on April 29, 2022 03:04 AM by sambiology sambiology

Comments

The link for global leaderboard sends me to the Texas leaderboard.

Posted by strawberrytart almost 2 years ago

So excited!

Posted by strawberrytart almost 2 years ago

Oooops! Fixed! :)

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

Whoop! Let's do this. :-)

Posted by kathrynwells333 almost 2 years ago

Also! One of the most helpful things to do is mark stuff as cultivated/captive throughout the state (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=texas-city-nature-challenge-2022-cities) ... Here's my message (feel free to copy/paste):

Don't forget to mark these as 'not wild.' Thanks! :)
https://vimeo.com/331151155

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

Do cultivated/captive observations count towards the totals?

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

@jaquiring -- they do, unfortunately (I'm a bit biased -- sometimes folks just go to the zoo or the botanic gardens during the city nature challenge!). However, the wild stuff is sooooo much more important! :)

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

That's good to know. I definitely try to include as much wild as possible, but also usually a handful of cultivated things around the garden and neighborhood. Going to the zoo or a botanic garden feels like "cheating." ;)

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

Here’s a challenge, go to a zoo or botanical garden and observe things that AREN’T captive/cultivated! 😃

Posted by strawberrytart almost 2 years ago

Great idea! I would imagine that arthropods would be particularly abundant!

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

Just as another FYI -- you can search by "random" on the date/time while ID'ing -- I do this to 'mix it up' a bit.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?order_by=random&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2022-dallas-fort-worth

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

@sambiology Good tip, Sam; thanks!

Posted by kathrynwells333 almost 2 years ago

I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished uploading my final batch from my camera. Now time to keep identifying what I can!

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

I was looking at the global totals, and I am thoroughly impressed with the number of participants in La Paz! They have more participants than the next two cities combined!

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/reto-ciudad-naturaleza-2022-la-paz-cnc

I’d love to know what they’re doing to invite so much participation!

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

I don’t know how to offer a suggestion to iNaturalist, but in addition to comparing observations, observers, and species, it would be cool to see a comparison of observations per observer and species per observer. Of course we can calculate all of those manually, but it would be time consuming.

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

Thanks!

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

I created a suggestion on the feature request forum. If anyone else thinks it would be a good feature, you can vote for it here:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/umbrella-project-page-sort-leaderboard-by-observations-per-observer-species-per-observer-and-observations-per-species/31591

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

So in looking at all the Texas areas that are competing, that made me wonder if they are all covering the same amount of territory/miles per group. It seems like we cover a rather large area, between all the counties.

Posted by lulubelle almost 2 years ago

My, oh my. Lots of insects looking for IDs. Do we have any ento-people we can tap into?

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

Lulubelle, I wonder... I think one statistic that would be interesting to know is the mean number of observations per participant. I think DFW would come out on top. Another interesting metric would be the number of observers per square mile across all counties in our count.

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

@galactic_bug_man Are you available to identify many of the insects in the project still missing identifications?

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

Here’s a link to identify arthropods needing to be identified.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=124378&taxon_id=47120

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

So as of this moment, DFW has about 31 observations per participant (the mean). Houston area has 19 per participant. It'd take a little work, but it'd be interesting to see the median since we clearly have a few people who contributed large numbers of observations. (Yay for us!!!)

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

@jaquiring, @galactic_bug_man is busy trying to put in his 1500 plus observations and has til tomorrow to get it done!

Posted by lulubelle almost 2 years ago

@lulubelle Yikes! I wish I were better at bug ID.

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

Holy mackerel! This year, 45% of our observations were insects and 36% were plants. In 2021, it was 38% insects and 42% plants. Guess @galactic_bug_man is a player in all this. ;) In 2020 it was pretty much even between plant and insect observations at about 41-42%. So much life to observe, eh?

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

@jaquiring, I thought I was half decent at both bug & plant ID, but this year in particular, there are so very many of each that I have not seen before. I feel kind of useless.

Posted by lulubelle almost 2 years ago

Well, it's done. I think DFW did a freaking fantastic job this year!

Posted by lulubelle almost 2 years ago

Indeed! We're on the global leaderboard and all.

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

Third place city/region (fourth including global) for the entire world, top in Texas and America! Great job everyone!

Posted by observerjosh almost 2 years ago

It was super fun!

Posted by strawberrytart almost 2 years ago

WAY TO GO ALL!!!! :) I've got to do some of the analytics of the data from our area and from the rest of Texas, but you all have already said it -- we did AWESOME this year!!! :) Mark your calendar for next year already: April 28 - May 1, 2023. :)

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

@sambiology Yay! I've got the 2023 CNC on my calendar. :-)

Posted by kathrynwells333 almost 2 years ago

Are we able to keep identifying?

Posted by lulubelle almost 2 years ago

@lulubelle -- absolutely!!! Please do keep the ID's up -- the Texas Nature Trackers folks that will do the data analysis state-wide are still working on regional reports, so all of our ID's for the un-ID'ed are still super important. I'll try to work on this more as well.

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

@sambiology Do IDs to other than the species level "count"? (Not sure what "count" means.)

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

Yes, absolutely -- so if genus or family is the lowest that an observation can get, the ID's are still super valuable! And there are still some observations that lack ID's at all, so even something like "grasses" or "beetles" still help narrow down the observation.

Posted by sambiology almost 2 years ago

I'll try to complete some more IDs, as well!

Posted by kathrynwells333 almost 2 years ago

OK, I went through the "Unknowns" this morning. Will continue onto other IDs as time permits.

Posted by jsuplick almost 2 years ago

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