An amazing turnout...and we're not done yet!

Thanks to all of you amazing folks out making observations this weekend, we blew past our 2019 observation record on the second day of the challenge, surpassed 6,000 observations, and are on our way to identifying more than 1,000 different species living with us here in Northern Utah. We've already had at least one report of one iNaturalist first record (a species never before documented on iNat) and other exciting finds are sure to emerge as we continue identifying your observations. If you know of any first records, interesting finds, or great observations (or made one yourself!), post it in the comments here! We would love to see it! THE CITY NATURE CHALLENGE ISN'T OVER YET! Our final collective results will be announced on May 4, but there is still work to do! HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP:

-Finish uploading your April 24-27 observations-
As long as your photos were TAKEN April 24-27, then you can upload them through May 3 and have them count for the City Nature Challenge. If you took photos on your phone, you can upload them through the app. If you made observations using a camera, you can upload using the iNaturalist Upload page on your home computer; here is a short video with more info: https://vimeo.com/167431843

-Help with Identifications-
In the same way that anyone can be an observer, anyone can also help identify observations. Identifications are a crucial step to an observation becoming a research quality record. To get started, select "Observations" on our project page and then choose “Identify.” From this page, you can add various filters to your search, to explore groups of species you know a little bit about. If you’re not an expert in any group, you can still help by identifying the “unknowns” - the observations with no IDs at all! To do this, click the “Filters” button and then select the dashed-line leaf with a question mark in it. This will show you all the observations that are currently listed as “unknown.” It’s really helpful to go through these and add high-level IDs like “plants” or “insects” or “birds” or “fungi” - whatever you know about the organism - so people who do know how to ID these groups down to species can find them! Here is a video about using the Identify page: https://vimeo.com/246153496

No matter what, please only add an ID of which you can be reasonably sure - it’s fine if you don’t know what something is, and it’s fine to only add a genus or family or even kingdom level ID.

If you are interested, you can also expand your identification skills beyond Utah - to help ID observations made during the CNC worldwide! Here is the Identify page for the entire City Nature Challenge.

Thank you for your amazing observations over the weekend, and if you are able/interested, for helping to make these 2020 CNC observations research-quality data points.

Don't forget to add any observations of note (e.g., first records, interesting photos, observations that were hard to get, etc.), or observations you have questions about, to the comments below- we would love to see what you found, and answer questions if you have them.

Posted on 29 de abril de 2020, 02:02 PM by