City Nature Challenge 2020: The Wasatch's Boletim

Hi everyone!

We are so excited for Utah to participate in its 4th City Nature Challenge!

City Nature Challenge 2020 important dates:
-Make and share observations on iNaturalist: April 24 - 27
-All observations uploaded and identified: April 28 - May 3
-International results announced: May 4
-More info on the 2020 CNC in Utah here: https://nhmu.utah.edu/challenge

This year there are over 230 cities participating in the CNC in more than 35 countries. You can see the full city list on the City Nature Challenge website. We need your help making observations in Utah!

You’re tagged in this post because you are one of Utah’s top observers and/or identifiers, and we hope you're willing to take part in documenting and identifying the incredible biodiversity of our region at the same time as thousands of people around the world exploring their own communities. Traditionally, Utah CNC partners have hosted various bioblitz events throughout northern Utah for the event. In light of COVID-19, we are instead encouraging interested participants to record the biodiversity in and around their homes and communities in whatever way feels most comfortable to keep themselves, their family, and their community safe, while also adhering to current government regulations.

8 Utah counties (Box Elder, Cache, Davis, Salt Lake, Summit, Wasatch, Weber, and Utah) are combining efforts as a unified “city” that spans northern Utah for this year’s challenge. All your observations made in these counties from April 24-27 will be automatically aggregated in our iNaturalist CNC project, “The Wasatch.” Participating cities worldwide (including UT) are in the CNC umbrella project (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020), and a full leaderboard will be live on the City Nature Challenge website (https://citynaturechallenge.org/city-list-2020/) once the CNC starts.

We look forward to seeing the amazing biodiversity we can record in UT during the CNC! Follow The Wasatch project for more information, updates, and to stay connected.

Thanks!
-Ellen (@elleneiriksson) and the 2020 UT CNC Partners: Hutchings Museum, Jordan River Commission, Natural History Museum of Utah, Ogden Nature Center, Red Butte Garden, SLC Parks & Public Lands, Salt Lake City Library, Salt Lake County Library, Stokes Nature Center, Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter, Thanksgiving Point, The Nature Conservancy, Tracy Aviary, US Department of Agriculture, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Utah’s Hogle Zoo, Utah Valley University, and Utah Open Lands

@adkinsadventures @alexanimalphotos @allycoconis @anudibranchmom @aroe @beetle_mch @bfox81 @blhorowitz @bryanto @bushjb @captaintreerex @caracrump @cbills @chad_w @clockwood @coreyjlange @cyberflora @damontighe @danasaur @dingoqueen @dlcoleman @dprasad @edithbowen @ellaandgoldfish @elleneiriksson @ericwagner @evolvulux @hannawacker @hawksthree @hikerd @hmcentire @hohey22 @isaac_krone @jacklasley @jay @jeremy_westerman @joecf @joshua217 @juniperberry67 @kennoe @kevinhintsa @kpretell @krechols13 @lcthompson @lemonsnapp @leslie_flint @lkaili @luken @mark67 @maticus @maybedre @mgbranstetter @mhearell @mwbirdco @nancar @omarrtheinaturalist @once-ler @patrickkelly907 @plant_thugg @pwildwise @rlawrenz @rmogburn @rojosmojo @sarah1990 @sarahsquatch @scottmo @sharkey @slctnl @stefmonkey @tigerbb @tonyfrates @troglonaut @tsirtalis @tysonvenom @wasatch_hunter @weedwifery @zookanthos

We are hours away from the start of the 2020 City Nature Challenge in Utah!

Northern Utah has a unique blend of urban and wild landscapes. With so many participants in the CNC taking part from home this year, observations will provide a unique look at the urban species we share our cities and towns with. We can't wait to see the results!

GEOPRIVACY:
For those interested in geoprivacy settings, iNaturalist has a short video that shows you how to obscure your observations. Obscuring a location doesn't remove the true location of an observation. You will always be able to see exactly where you were when you made an observation and project curators will also have access to the true coordinates. The general public, however, won't see the true location. Instead, iNaturalist places a circle (rather than the regular balloon marker), randomly on the map, within 10 kilometers of where the observation was made. We don't recommend using the "private" setting because it won't be publicly indexed to a place, won't count towards the CNC, and you also won't get any feedback or identifications from other iNaturalist users.

We are excited to see all of the great observations made this year!

Stay tuned here, and to NHMU's website for more resources and offerings from the 2020 Utah City Nature Challenge Partners!

The City Nature Challenge has begun! Here are some resources to keep you inspired over the next 4 days!

• Exploring Nature in and Around Your Home: a guide to help you look for and even attract species to your home and yard for the City Nature Challenge! It’s going to be a warm weekend, so we definitely recommend trying out a moth light – it can be as simple as a white pillowcase or t-shirt with a flashlight shining on it!

• Natural History Museum of Utah Backyard Bingo:

• In and Around your Home
• The Jordan River
• The Foothills

• Backyard Bioblitz: Converting your family into a team of scientists!

• Backyard Birds: Meet some feathered friends you are likely to see in your neighborhood with this interactive post from our friends at the Tracy Aviary.

• Utah State Noxious Weed Guide: Don't ignore weeds! iNaturalist observations of weeds help the Salt Lake County Health Department track, and mitigate their spread.

It's that time of year again, where for one long weekend in April, every day is your birthday: full of surprises and gifts. It's the City Nature Challenge! Woohoo!

Here at Stokes Nature Center in Cache Valley, we are celebrating by encouraging everyone to bioblitz their backyard or front walk. What better way to bring in spring than with finally knowing what the heck kind of spiky weed is interrupting your lawn, or jetting out of a sidewalk crack? I guarantee you'll never see it as a weed again once you get to know what it is and start to notice how it too changes with the seasons as our year progresses.

This year is especially unique, for some pretty obvious reasons, but also for some exciting scientific reasons. iNaturalist had its first ever observation of the invasive European Firebug in Cache Valley just last month, and where there is one, there are more. This year, we're really interested to find out how far these recent invasives have spread throughout our community. Stokes is asking people to get low to the ground, and find these box elder bug imposters so that we can help document their spread into more of Utah.

We're also interested in folks finding anything new or unfamiliar in our amazing Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Did you know that Logan Canyon has some species that are found nowhere else on earth? It's tiny nooks and microclimates along the cliff walls make each rock eddy its own Galapagos island of potential for new discoveries. If you are able after investigating your backyard, get out and adventure a little, and catalog some of Utah's amazing unique species which hide in plain sight. Perhaps new friends will find their way in front of your camera and inspire others with curiosity, too.

This most important thing though, is that you have fun. CNC is such a wonderful opportunity to remember that our world is still good, full of amazing life, and Utah is a great place to be. As people around the world all dedicate one long weekend in April to remember who their wild neighbors are and learn about them, choose to do your part and learn to see your home, too, with a deeper eye. You'll begin to see, like with that sidewalk weed, that you are an inescapable part of a beautiful and vibrant world that's all around you always.

From all of us at Stokes Nature Center and the City Nature Challenge, we wish everyone a very happy CNC! We are so very happy to be just one of many who are representing The Wasatch this year. Happy iNaturalisting, Utah!

Patrick Kelly (@patrickkelly907)
Director of Education
Stokes Nature Center

Team Wasatch is doing an amazing job recording species! The spirit of the City Nature Challenge is collecting images of the WILD organisms all around us – like insects living between flowers someone planted, weeds in park strips and sidewalk cracks, and squirrels and birds perched on buildings, power lines, and feeders. Observations of wild living or dead organisms, or evidence of those organisms (like shells, tracks, scat, fur, feathers, etc.) are all great photos to upload. If you take a photo of something you know is not wild (like a plant you planted in your yard!), please help the iNaturalist community by marking it as captive/cultivated before uploading it.

Keep up the great observations! We are already breaking Utah City Nature Challenge records, and we aren't even half way through!

What a great start to this year's City Nature Challenge! People across Box Elder, Cache, Davis, Salt Lake, Summit, Utah, Wasatch, and Weber counties are rising to the challenge to observe the nature all around them! In the first 2 days of the challenge, we surpassed the number of species observed in Utah during the entire 2019 CNC, and are well on our way to setting a new record of observations made in Utah during any previous CNC!

There are many observation highlights so far, including labeled observations of 2,064 plants, 309 birds, 302 insects, 79 spiders, 74 mammals, 56 fungi & lichens, 32 gastropods, 17 reptiles, 2 amphibians, and 2 Bacteria. Here are a few highlights:

• The second ever European Firebug observed in Cache County by @michaelashcroft
• A Northern Leopard Frog (a vulnerable species in UT) in Cache County @jgjulander
• This Swainson’s Hawk in Salt Lake County by @maerhwyn
• A Mallard duck and her ducklings observed by @hmcentire
• This Fox Squirrel captured mid-air by @stevenmerkley
• Miroscopic bacteria, Genus Beggiatoa, found by @zookanthos

What will you observe next!?

We are coming to the final hours of the 2020 City Nature Challenge! As a reminder, you have until May 3rd to upload your images and files, so no pressure to get images uploaded tonight. As long as they were taken/observed from April 24-27, 2020, (and are uploaded by May 3, 2020) they will count towards the challenge. What else will you find this evening? Here is some inspiration for those final posts:

-Record evening birdsong using the voice memo app on your phone, and then upload the song to iNaturalist as an audio file (note: you can only upload audio files from a computer, not from a mobile device, unfortunately). More on how to do this here

-Have you looked for things in and on your house yet? Spiders in the basement, Box Elder Bugs in the garage, bird and wasp nests outside your home- these are great things to add to iNaturalist (they are wild, living things!), especially as we are all staying home, and staying safe.

-Consider getting out for some nighttime observations! There are many insects (and other animals) active at night. Bring a flashlight (or even a black light) and some containers (clear jars, tupperware, etc.) and see if you can catch some nocturnal insects. The clear containers and lights will help you photograph species you find (or you can bring them inside to photograph, and then release them when you are done). A quick internet search for collecting insects at night will yield even more inspiration, for those interested.

Happy observing!

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.