Final update on 2020 BiodiverCity Challenge
Thanks everyone, for participating in last month's bioblitz.
Observations were also submitted on NatureLynx, an app run by the AB Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI), and some written records were gathered and submitted by the Edmonton Nature Club (ENC). Overall there were 2608 observations; 1058 here on iNat, 920 on NatureLynx, and 630 written by ENC members. Jordan Bell (of ABMI) and I compiled and compared these observations, and we figure there were at least 665 different species observed. We can't give an exact species count, because some observations were only done to genus or family level, and may be the same as other observations made to species level. For example, we don't know for sure if observations of "Viola" and "Violaceae" are different from the 5 violet species that were also observed, so I didn't count "Viola" or "Violaceae".
Here on iNat, our official count as of midnight June 28 (the formal deadline to submit records) was 1058 observations of 464 species, by 60 observers. Since then, a few more observations were submitted (including 2 new species), and identifications continue to be revised and improved, so we're sitting at 1080 observations and 471 species as our unofficial total, which will continue to change as more IDs are made. I figure that's not too shabby for our first-ever BiodiverCity event in Edmonton.
We're definitely going to do it again next year, and perhaps challenge other Alberta municipalities to do this too. I will leave this 2020 project up permanently, for comparison to future years. I've also created a new project that will compile observations across all time, not just for the 4-day bioblitz. It's called "Edmonton Biodiversity"; feel free to join that project too, to see what else lives here. As of today, the project summary tells me that over 7000 observations of 1415 species have been submitted to iNat, by 841 observers. Keep observing nature; hopefully you'll join us again next year!
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