Belgium - iNaturalist World Tour
Belgium is the 25th stop on the iNaturalist World Tour. @henkwallays2 is the top observer in Belgium. His efforts are centered near Ghent and Bruges in the northwest of the country along with other top observers such as @damiano_oldoni, @peterwijnsouw, and @purperlibel. @mathg89's observations are clustered in the center of the country. Other top users such as @doorme @davide-12-09, @qgroom, and @bastiaan have observations centered elsewhere in the country.
The number of observations per month in Belgium has grown rapidly over the past two years. The strong seasonality is evident with observations peaking in the summer months. Vespawatch, an effort out of INBO led by @purperlibel recently came online for reporting wasp observations to iNaturalist from around Belgium.
While many of the top identifiers such as @spectruma @gillessanmartin and @peterwijnsouw are based in Belgium, others like @borisb have contributed their expertise from elsewhere. @borisb is famous on iNaturalist for his incredible global knowledge about beetles.
I suspect, like other countries we've examined so far such as Germany, iNaturalist in Belgium is relatively small relative to other sites for sharing nature observations. What can we do to make iNaturalist more vibrant in Belgium? Please share your thoughts below or on this forum thread
@henkwallays2 @mathg89 @damiano_oldoni @peterwijnsouw @purperlibel @doorme @spectruma @gillessanmartin @borisb @ldacosta
We’ll be back tomorrow with Singapore!
Comentários
Not just relatively small compared to other sites, Waarnemingen.be has 35 million observations with over 5,5 million photos. (See www.waarnemingen.be/stats/ )
I'll write a little piece about the comparison of iNaturalist to Waarnemingen.be & Waarneming.nl - and in which aspects I think those sites are superior - when we get to the Netherlands.
I agree on you in numbers, as i have more observations than iNaturalist has in many countries. But it seems Dutch observe a lot (which is true, we overtook the British) with their Dutch websites https://www.verspreidingsatlas.nl/ (19.842.562), https://www.telmee.nl/, https://www.ndff.nl/ (100.000.000, locked)) and https://waarneming.nl/stats/ .But looking at the numbers inaturalist only started in May 2018 in Belgium, so juist one year.
Well, i can mention some pro items..for your story
1) The iNat method is superior outside Europe, i think most Dutch people will use iNat outside Europe altough last year observado.org is doing well with about 10.000 observations/day currently while 200observations/day used to be the standard.
2) If you would like the (2000pixel) photo above the 800 pixels, but uploading will take more time with bigger photos.
3) If you want to spend quite alot of time in a kind of QRY language. A lot if possible but sometimes it is a bit hard to find are even undocument.
4) iNat has an API..
5) iNat has good relations with GBIF, wrn.nl does not do that much with GBIF. wrn.nl is more closed, certainly after 2009.
6) In the past the connections with relevant organisations are more clear for iNat i think as wrn.nl was private funded(Well done Lenze Hofstee!!!!) for a very long time.
7) iNat has a programming environment.
8) (English) support for iNaturalist is more clear. As a foreigner living in Belgium i would prefer iNaturalist.
9) iNat is very visual with a strong relation to photos. In iNat 80% of the observations could have photos..in Observado 99% does not have photos. Also the reason why OBservado is less suitable outside Europe i think.
10) Easy to search on Genus of Family in inat if you want to look for familie. Also ment in 3) I do not annoyance ; chagrin ; vexation ; nuisance ; irritation in the way the search is organised in iNat.
There is an 'invoerdatum' which you can use for selections to. I use is very often. I love it.
Mainly Open Data en Open Source software..wrn.nl is rather closed, used to be rather closed
World wide AI system (despite the forum i count this as a very big advantage although it should not propose species from another continet) while the Naturalis AI (computervision) system (Leiden) uses a GeoBlock preventing IDs outside the Benelux (i think). I use the iPhone AI implementation of Naturalis and i do not like the implementation. I think the AI (computervision) is excelent for the Benelux.
Huge appreciaton for validators but the iNat peer system has also disadvantages by overruling correct identifications of Calopteryx. In wrn.nl they work with admins , only few are allowd to make remarks although this system is updated a bit because this wrn.nl method is not working outside Europe.
Inat is growing rapidly last 12 months as the Belgium numbers are already showing. I also noticed this for Sri Lanka and Bolivia, after 2 years i get now much feed back from Bolivia. In Sri Lanka there was already a difference before and after my holiday.
ComputerVision is working rather good in Benelux.
I agree in this quote:Californian Academy of Sciences site is totally acceptable, and even more so National Geographic as i would like to know where all the information is going to. It is funny to read that the Russians do not have any problems with an American website. But in Bolivia i was considerd American...a tour like this https://inaturalist.github.io/internationals_all.html and other international blogs are excellent to show an international mindset.
Germany has strong regulations they used to have their own datacenters..so GDPR could be an issue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-is-discontinuing-the-german-data-trustee-model/ so it is good that iNaturalist was quickly compliant with GDPR.
iNat has a language chooser at the bottom right of the website which is hard to find and should be in the menu too.
I like the way you can activate the computer vision in your own observation by just simulating a new ID to your observation. Very easy (but hard to find i think)
I waited 5 years before i started to add observations in iNat so i can imagine that others also are reluctant to start with a new international system, excelent outside Europe but does not have man benefits inside the BeNeLux. But for foreign people living in the Benelux iNat has several advantages, for example one website fits the whole world, in stead of three different ones (NL, BE, world).
Altough i did not like Plantnet around 2017 (it is only for Plants i guess and in those days it did not support a database) it is also rather popluar in the Netherlands..(Reacton on https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/26012-france-inaturalist-world-tour)
Well done @ginsengandsoon on the mollusk ID-ing!
I already commented on the French stop (I didn't think you were going to stop in our little country...).
Several other platforms exist particularly in the southern part with 3 main platforms (www.waarnemingen.be + 2 others with ~1 million observations each : http://observatoire.biodiversite.wallonie.be/encodage/default.aspx + https://www.biogeonet.ulg.ac.be/). In the northern part of Belgium www.waarnemingen.be is dominant and a good share of the 35 million observations are concentrated there. These platforms started in 2008 so they have been there for a long time and have built a huge community with many excellent naturalists.
For me, the key advantage of iNaturalist is its openness: open source software (+ public API) + open data (anyone can download any data). On the other platforms, the data are locked by the institution behind the platform (either 1) NGOs + private company or 2) a public administration or 3) a university). Locked data is an unnecessary barrier to the effective use of the data...
I think that most naturalist using these Belgian platforms are unlikely to migrate on iNaturalist (eg habits are difficult to change + larger community on the Belgian platforms + most of the collected data are without pictures as explained by @ahospers ).
My feeling is that iNaturalist will interest different kinds of profiles :
citizen scientist that are interested in nature but that are not naturalist freaks (shazam like app, people not involved in the naturalist communities for whom the other platforms are more in the habits)
a handful of idealists convinced by the importance of open data, open science and free softwares (free as in free speech)
maybe photographers (?) because technically speaking iNaturalist is indeed by far better for photo-observations than the other platforms (easier upload with metadata import, pictures of a larger size, better display on the profile,...)
Another key advantage of iNaturalist is that it is more a social network, oriented toward collaboration in a decentralized manner (like wikipedia). The possibility to create projects, fields, sites,... is really good. The recent www.vespawatch.be project shows also how an open platform like iNaturalist can be used by any scientists as a lever to collect efficiently data about an invasive species and share it with the community without having to obtain the "authorisation" of the "owners" of an existing platform.
Maybe one way to attract more "traditional" naturalist would be to make the encoding of long list of observations without pictures easier (and maybe to separate on the profile page the verifiable photo observations from the other casual observations).
The fact that anyone on iNat can identify will also frighten many Belgian naturalists. On the other platforms, the observations are "validated" by a handful of "official" specialists. This has some advantages but also some disadvantages (it's a little like the models behind Wikipedia vs Encarta encyclopedia...)
Yes: the lack of a reputation system for identification on iNaturalist (or more correctly, a reputation system where everyone is equal), and the lack of recognition of professional and amateur taxonomists and specialists, were a major stumbling block with iNaturalist and one of the prime reasons for the southern African community choosing iSpot over iNaturalist in 2010. The idea that any schoolkid carries equal weight in identifications to the world expert in the group is still a terrifying concept to many people, especially those wanting to use the data. Where identification quality is a prime concern, it is easy to see that iNaturalist will be seen as inferior to other platforms, and a major reason to stay with or maintain these systems. In South Africa, this is the main reason given to use the alternative sites: the various ~Map projects (MammalMAP, OdonataMAP, TreeMAP: http://vmus.adu.org.za/) all have experts in their group on the identification team who are solely responsible for the IDs. The downside is that during the field season it can take months to get a simple identification.
In Belgium we use the www.waarnemingen.be site alot. I register my observations in both. Whereas inat had an advantage over the A.I supported identification, this has now been setback a bit as on www.waarnemingen.be the identification part has also been implmented and although it needs to 'learn' more it does support a lot and is quite accurate in some areas. Nevertheless I continue to enter my observations in both databases and hope I may (as time goes) import the 20.000 older observations in it as well.
What I like alot about the Inat is indeed the support of some people that have a great knowledge over some areas where I am less familiar in. I have been surprized by the embbeded ID possibilities of Inat on plants ! Although this is not my expertise I do want to know what I saw as it correlates with some insects I try to follow ( moths, bees, hemiptera...)
Trying to support my observations as much as possible with sharp portret / close up images of the animals the Inat principle to take on details from the images (date ...) and take over embedded keywords from the title (where I put the scientific name of the animal) reduces input/typing alot . At the Belgian site we actually needed to type that in ( until recently) ... When it comes to my international observations (Bulgaria, US, France ) I prefer Inat as the international version of www.observado.org still works on the old way and takes more time to input. then arriving home after a photographic trip with 500 or even more images to add... that really works better in Inat (and the id support of people is really helpfull).
Anyway I hope to be able to continue adding observations for more years and really appreciate the id-support from quite a few people some of which I think are worthy of some kind of a reward ;-) . The coleoptera support of @borisb is incredible ! As long as I can hold a camera I hope to do my input here !
I would also agree on the id- reputation notes of some people above. I have correctly been setback in id-ing species by some epxerts (and I am obviously all fine with that), but have also already had identifications overrruling correct ones by people with less experience. But ok, on the overall happy to participate and the pro's greatly outweigh the con's...
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