6M observations total! Where has iNaturalist grown in 80 days with 1 million new observations?

We hit 6 million observations today! It's been a very active and awesome summer since we hit 5 million observations just 80 days ago. This will be a hard stretch to beat as a lot has happened. In fact, we launched image recognition in the iNat iOS app the same week this most recent 1 million observation stretch began!

As we head into the northern hemisphere fall and things mellow out a bit, we thought we'd take a moment to consider this most recent million observations. This map shows all 6 million observations binned into 200 x 200 km pixels. iNaturalist still has the largest number of observations in a few strongholds like California, New England, Texas, Mexico, Italy, and New Zealand.

But where have these most recent million observations had the biggest relative impact? The map below shows the percent increase in observations since the 80-day stretch that produced this most recent million observations began. 100% means that the total number of iNaturalist observations in that pixel doubled in the past 80 days alone. We removed pixels with fewer than 250 observations.

This map is very different than the overall map. iNaturalist strongholds like California and Texas don't show up as very hot because the contribution in the last 80 days isn't that large relative to the number of observations already posted from those places. But certain areas really stand out. For example, how about that bright red pixel in the middle of Brazil? Before the last 80 days, there were 182 observations in that area on the Mato Grosso / Pará boundary in Brazil. But over the last 80 days 564 more observations were posted. This ~300% (564 / 182 * 100% = 309.89%) increase was mostly driven by hundreds of observations from @birdernaturalist and @markuslilje nicely filling out this part of the map.

Theres also larger patterns on the map. Growth in southern Canada reflects a very successful Bioblitz to mark Canada's 150th Anniversary. Eastern Australia has been becoming more active in part thanks to collaborations with the Australian Museum and Questagame. In the United States, iNaturalist is growing rapidly in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains. Meanwhile, iNaturalist continues to get more traction in Europe. I should also mention neat areas of growth in Central/South America, Eastern/Southern Africa, and East Asia,
but we thought this map might be more fun for you to zoom in and explore yourself. You can find that map here if its not displaying below:

Posted on 16 de setembro de 2017, 12:55 AM by loarie loarie

Comentários

Very cool to see that my 209 observations +23 from @annwillyard contributed to a 680% increase in Guangdong Province in southeast China! Also thanks to @tongyihua for most of the plant IDs.

Publicado por aaronliston mais de 6 anos antes

Wow - thats a pretty striking example!

Publicado por loarie mais de 6 anos antes

wow, this is so cool. Glad to have contributed to a couple of Colorado areas this summer.

Publicado por taogirl mais de 6 anos antes

Very nice interactive map and congratulations with the growth.
But more impressive is the fabulous image recognition in the iNat iOS app. After my registration in 2013 (18823) I returned to iNaturalist in june 2017 by accident, just a few days after the release of the image recognition in the iNat iOS app which turned out to be extremely usefull in Cuba so i decided to add both my Cuba as my Armenia observations as well. It seems that the 2017 website is also much better than the version of 2013. I like the new "add observations" screen but the good "show similar species" option is a bit hidden.

Publicado por ahospers mais de 6 anos antes

Neat. Scott @loarie, any patterns stand out to you in comparison to the 'underepresented metro areas' you highlighted a while back?

Publicado por muir mais de 6 anos antes

Nice!

Publicado por susanhewitt mais de 6 anos antes

From 6 million to 50 million...Keep it going!

Publicado por awesomerobot1227 mais de 3 anos antes
Publicado por loarie mais de 3 anos antes

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