Indonesia - iNaturalist World Tour
For the 24th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour we head to Indonesia. Indonesia is home to some of the best coral reefs in the world and this is reflected in the top observers - at least 4 of whom are avid divers and prolific underwater observers (e.g. @maractwin, @lovelyclemmy, @davidr, @timcameron). There are also top users based in Indonesia. @brunodurand splits his time between France and Bali. @jasonalexander is from Indonesia but is currently studying in Canada. @naufalurfi, a student at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, and perhaps the mysterious @franzanth are among the few top observers who appear to be based in Indonesia year round.
I suspect the 'spike-y' nature of the observations per month chart is a result of visits by super observers like @maractwin. But the number of observations per month has grown quite dramatically in Indonesia in recent months. It would be interesting to know whats driving this.
@maractwin is not only the top observer in Indonesia, but also the top identifier overall and the top fish identifier. That fish are the second most 'observose' category in Indonesia is a testament to the hard work of underwater observers and identifiers like @maractwin. The top identifiers in Indonesia for the most part seem to be a cross-section of super identifiers from around the world (e.g. @briangooding, @tom-kirschey-nabu, @zizou, @kemper, @charliev, @hsini_lin, @ongzi) with @naufalurfi brining local expertise for arachnids.
It looks like there's potential to make improvements needed to get more Indonesians involved and maybe the diving community. What can we do to help? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread
@maractwin @lovelyclemmy @franzanth @brunodurand @davidr @naufalurfi @tom-kirschey-nabu @zizou @kemper @charliev
We’ll be back tomorrow with Belgium!
Comentários
Oh hi! I'm a native Indonesian based in Yogyakarta, though I'm somewhat nomadic this year (hence the spike of observations in my own account). I also noticed that some people were doing community projects in Bali, which definitely contributed to the spike.
From what I've seen so far, science literacy rate and non-entertainment app usage rates here aren't as high as nearby countries like Singapore. When we compare the observation and population count between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, this becomes very obvious.
As far as I know, myself and @naufalurfi are the only two native Indonesians in the top 10 when it comes to observation count. The rest are foreigners who cover Bali and Papua, both known for the beautiful reefs.
Unfortunately, underwater photography is largely inaccessible to locals due to the price tag of the gear—hence the demographics of Indonesian marine observers. I'll be in Bali this August/September, let's see if I could connect with the diving communities.
I'm not much of a people person, though, so organizing large-scale bioblitz is not my thing. But I'm spreading the iNat love all over the place. So if anyone's around and wants a company for terrestrial exploration, I'm always game. I even started a destinations spreadsheet... https://twitter.com/franzanth/status/1148774473719353347
thanks for all the info @franzanth!
I agree that diving photography equipment can be out of reach - I'm on the gopro end of the spectrum myself
Yes I forgot about a a project by the Green School (which is an international school in Bali) was doing - @pakjade is this still active?
Are there any good nature programs/institutions in Indonesia that we should reach out to try to get more engagement on the ground from Indonesians such as yourself?
I noticed there was a school effort (assignment?) earlier this year, albeit the vast majority of the observations added were captive or cultivated. If there are more of those, especially in areas outside of the big urban places in Java I'm sure we can get many more people involved
I feel like Indonesians in general are very pragmatic, so programs/institutions tend to focus on tangible issues like pollution, not biodiversity. As for myself, I take invertebrate pictures for my illustration work reference, so I don't observe for observation count's sake as well.
We even don't have many active taxonomists here—the active ones are overworked in their day job. You can see that the top identifiers are mostly foreigners and that a lot of the arthropods (especially micro lepidoptera and jumping spiders) I photographed can't be narrowed down to genus level for now.
There's also a great infrastructure disconnect between where the tech-savvy Indonesians live and where the "wilderness" is. For better or worse, our nature is generally difficult to access. I think, at this point, it will be easier to rile up semi-active Indonesian users than bringing new ones. I know that lots of biology students from Universitas Gajah Mada and Institut Teknologi Bandung, as well as conservation workers, casually use iNat.
Anyway, I'm in full networking mode this year so I'll keep scouting for people you can reach out to. I hope someone else will chime in and bring better ideas too!
I'm also a native Indonesian but I'm based in the US and I'd love to help in any way I can
@neontetraploid & @jasonalexander we should hang out when you're back around :D
Mongabay India just highlighted a project for flowering plants that includes Indonesia as well, in case folks are interested: https://india.mongabay.com/2019/07/citizen-scientists-to-scout-for-wildflowers-across-four-countries/
Thanks, Carrie! As a result of the project highlighted here I have been spending a fair bit of time with the observations for these four countries, especially going through the older Unknowns and just plain Plants (often assigning only a slightly more detailed id). Its really noticeable that there is a tiny proportion of these for Indonesia - the community has been doing an amazing job of getting Unknowns classified. There is still plenty of id to be done so all welcome - https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/naturemap-plants
I've never been diving myself, but I sure do enjoy watching the observations come in of the underwater life! :)
I just wanted to say that after a storm, all kinds of marine life washes up on beaches: fish, mollusk shells, sea stars, corals and so on.
People who can't afford to scuba dive, can nonetheless record quite a lot of marine life from what washes up on the beaches, and also what is visible during low tides.
I have thousands of iNat observations based on what washes up on beaches.
Most observations and identifications are done by foreigners, so we're lacking participation from local indonesians albeit it does grow somewhat. A lot of us especially academia people are actually very knowledgeable about the local biota. I have fellow colleagues who are really dedicated on dragonflies, birds, orchids, snakes, etc. I tried promoting inaturalist to them but so far none of them stayed :(. Though i will continue trying to get more people to inaturalist.
So i guess what we really need is more exposure for the locals
thanks @naufalurfi - is there anything we could do to help you promote more to locals? ie are there specific materials that would help (like handouts or slides) or is there anything we could do remotely to help you organize an event like a Bioblitz? (assuming you'd want to take on something like that ;)
Also anything we can do on the site - like trying to get it translated that would help?
Like @franzanth, im not really a people person so big things like bioblitz are off to me. I just want to start slow by just introducing inaturalist to the people around me especially fellow students who works in biodiversity. I don't think translating the site to indonesian is a priority since we do just fine with navigating through english websites. Those who don't tend to be, well, less interested in citizen science thing? I think the average people here would prefer using mobile phones rather than a laptop so i guess optimizing the mobile app would be good since i personally believe it's not really great right now (lots of crashes at least for me, less features than website, really only use it for uploading).
For now i don't really need anything but i do appreciate your help and maybe i will contact you when i do need it!
@loarie just remembered something, if there's anything Indonesians love more than anything, it's the big name social media like Instagram and Twitter. People here are very social and like to show off what they do. So maybe the active Indonesians should start "bragging" a bit about their excursions to attract friends? Or maybe there could be share buttons on iNat's site and mobile app that allow people to share their observations with one click? I'm just throwing random thoughts here, sorry if this seems inconclusive :)
I second the idea that there could be a share button to connect to other social media platforms
While I commend the idea of making iNat spread its influence through things like Instagram, I'm more than a bit skeptical about how that will affect the environment. We all know how destructive big crowds of social-media users can be...
As has been pointed out, I'm a foreigner who comes to Indonesia to dive. I have lots of interests besides fish, and usually try to observe the birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and other groups as well. And here I've been stymied. I've asked staff at places I stay for advice to get to wild areas to look for things, and generally just get blank looks. At the end of one dive trip I had an overnight at a hotel before my flight back, and noticed a large wetland with herons very close by. But the wetland was fenced off. When I asked the concierge how to get in there, he thought I was insane and had no idea. When I had an extra day in Sorong, West Papua, I researched ahead of time a park that should have had good wildlife. And the local taxi drivers didn't know where it was, though it was only a few km out of town. So not only do not many of the locals watch wildlife, but even those who stand to make some money supporting foreigners who want to do this haven't figured it out.
thats interesting @maractwin - its odd how in some countries (Costa Rica being a prime example) ecotourism is very well developed and how in others it is not
Coverage, nontheless, seems to be not bad!
Today iNat count of butterfly species observed in Indonesia is close to 1,000 (898). "Indonesia" here to be understood as the geographic frame, not political boundaries, including extreme northern localities in Australia, extreme southern ones in the Philippines, the whole of Borneo and half of MY peninsula. In fact, of the total of 23,700 observations, 13,400 alone are from Singapore, another 6,200 from Malaysia, leaving ~ 4,000 from Indonesia proper.
This is not of too much importance for the function of iNaturalist as a nature guide. The most part of terrestrial species, at least agile ones as butterflies, have a range over (parts of) Sundaland - you find them on either side of today marine straits.
I found a number for Peninsular Malaysia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_butterflies_of_Peninsular_Malaysia : Roughly 1,200 species.
We may assume, that more than half of butterfly species found in Indonesia W of the Wallace line are already covered by iNaturalist - if we have observations from Indonesian territory, or not.
This is FAR ! better than any existing book, I bet!
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