Fire Poppy Cup
May Bracket Challenge
It's that time of the year again! Last year, during our Fire Poppy Cup, our project gained almost 12,000 new observations which included about 1,800 different species! And over 73% of those observations reached research grade! This year, we are thrilled to bring our beloved tournament back! Will we see a new fire reign champion, or will the Glass Fire take home the win once more?
This Spring, the Glass Fire project looks as strong as ever, but the LNU Lightning Complex is close behind. With the recent Save Mount Diablo Bioblitz and the City Nature Challenge, the SCU Lightning Complex project has actually gained more observations than the top seeded teams. Since the start of the year, our 2020 Fire Followers Project has grown by approximately 29,000 observations, which is 9,000 more than last year’s 20k! May is a big month for community science and venturing the outdoors, so if you find yourself in a recent burn area, help your region take home the crown this year by participating in this challenge.
Details:
The Fire Poppy Cup is a tournament-style challenge of the top 4 fires from each of the 4 regions in California: Northwest, Big East, Central, and Southwest.
Don’t forgot to also check out our Whispering Bells Cup happening for our CA Fire Followers 2021 Projects here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/california-fire-followers-2021
Dates:
Hot 16 | May 2 - 8 Winner: Most observations
Quarter-Final | May 9 - 15 Winner: Highest % observations at Research Grade
Semi-Final | May 16 - 22 Winner: Most species
Final | May 23 - May 31 Winner: Most Participants (identifiers+observers)
Team List
These seeds were ranked based off of the observations since the start of the project
Fire Poppy Cup:
As stated before, this tournament will be single elimination. The first round will be focused on the total number of observations. Quarter Finals will require participants to help identify and get observations made from the Hot 16 and Quarter Final to Research Grade! The Semi-Finals will be all about the number of species in celebration of International Day for Biodiversity on May 22! Finally, the championship round will be all about community science and connecting with nature over the holiday weekend. We want to encourage people to venture out into some of these burn areas, but if you can't access the outdoors that week, you can also participate by identifying observations that need ID!
Each round is shown below and the Champion will hold bragging rights over other regions! Be sure to support your Burn Zone throughout the competition, but most importantly, show some love to your Region!
-Tournament detail along with dates are shown above-
Don’t forgot to also check out our Whispering Bells Cup happening for our CA Fire Followers 2021 Projects here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/california-fire-followers-2021/journal/65251-whispering-bells-cup
You are tagged in this post because you were among the top observers in the month of April, contributing to a minimum of 1oo observations to the project! Thank you all for your tremendous contributions and I hope you take part of this challenge as well.
@jonathan27 @graysquirrel @betweenthelyons @mhrains @spifferella @tthwc @gyrrlfalcon @susanfawcett @newtpatrol @coffearobusta42 @naturecandids @aigner @thehyphaemovement @dsacer @aparrot1 @arvel @dylapodiformes @jaesparza11 @carlfrederick @damontighe @jenniferlchandler @tedrake
Comments
I'll be doing my part to keep Glass at #1! :)
@dlevitis It could be fun to organize another expedition into the less-travelled parts of Sugarloaf during the time. Especially if it's somewhere we can get a park vehicle ride to ;)
Tuesday, May 10 2022
As the first round of the Fire Poppy Cup comes to an end and we look towards the Quarter Finals, let's break down the scores and results from the Hot 16. Here are the highlights!
Updated Scores
This week had a mix of expected results and surprising outcomes.
Starting with Games 1-4 with the two powerhouse regions, Northwest and Central. Game 1, the August Complex stood no chance against the 800+ observations from the Glass Fire. @graysquirrel, great job keeping the Glass Fire on top with 30% of the total observations! Game two was a close one, with LNU Lightning Complex barely scrapping a win with 40 more observations! Game 3, the SCU Lightning Complex stomped on the Dolan Fire with 700+ more observations, almost enough to compete with our reigning champ. To finish off this side of the bracket, the CZU Lightning Complex just gets by with 46 observations over the River Fire, which before the competition seemed to be a dark horse, containing over 70% of the Fire Poppy observations found in the 2020 Fire Followers Project.
Moving on to Games 5-8, we get into less blowouts, making for some interesting matches! With over 60% of the Bobcat burn area opening to the public early last month, the observations are starting to come in! With that said, the Bobcat Fire are going through to the Quarter Finals with ease, recording about 350 observations last week. The Valley Fire also took a comfortable win over the Silverado Fire by about 200 observations. In Game 7, the Creek Fire did not perform their best, but just scraped through past the North Complex. Lastly to finish off this round, El Dorado and the SQF Complex might have had the same amount of species, but El Dorado came up on top with a single observation more.
Updated Bracket
Upcoming games with dates and rules |
Quarter-Final | May 9 – 15
We are currently in the next round of the Fire Poppy Cup. This week's scoring method will be by the highest % observations at Research Grade. This means that aside from making observations, Naturalists will need to work together and identify observations made this week to get them to Research Grade (RG). Reminder that RG is achieved when a verifiable observation has been reviewed and the community is in agreement (⅔ or more of identifiers agree).
I will be counting all observations at RG from May 2nd to May 15th in order to allow Naturalist to ID observations already uploaded.
Goodluck!
CA Fire Poppy Cup: Quarter Final Recap
Monday, May 16:
Let's glance over some of the results from our Quarter Finals to see who moved on to the Semi-Finals of the Fire Poppy Cup. Let's check out the highlight reel from this week!
Updated Scores
This week provided an opportunity for our smaller fires to take charge as we scored on percentage of observations at Research Grade. Quick reminder, RG is achieved when a verifiable observation has been reviewed and the community is in agreement (⅔ or more of identifiers agree).
Starting out with the Northwest region, we had our biggest upset yet. The Glass Fire falls to the LNU Lightning Complex in such a close match. Our reigning champion lost this match up by a 3% difference. Although racking up the most observations out of the entire competition, Glass Fire falls short with identification, having only 49% of those observations reach research grade (RG). Last year, the LNU Lightning Complex had 37% of their observations at RG, but this year really turned it around and increased that percent by 16% to continue to the Semi-Finals.
In our Central region, we had another close match, however, the CZU Lightning Complex was able to stay on top and beat the SCU Lightning Complex by a 12% difference. Again, the loser of this round had the advantage with more observations, however, not enough at RG. This makes it the 2nd time in a row that the CZU Lightning Complex comes up on top and moves on to the Quarter-Finals.
So far, non of the fires had more than 70% of their observations at RG in the last 2 weeks, but that all changed thanks to the Valley Fire. With an impressive 83% of observations at RG, it easily beat the Bobcat Fire, which had the second most observations behind the Glass Fire. The Southwest region did not disappoint!
Finally our Big East region will be represented by the with the lowest-scoring win in this round of the tournament. The Creek Fire took home a win over the El Dorado Fire, but they will need to significantly improve if they want to stand a chance against the Valley Fire this week.
Updated Bracket
Upcoming games with dates and rules |
Quarter-Final | May 16 – 22
We are currently in the next round of the Fire Poppy Cup. This week's scoring method will be measured by the amount of species observed in celebrate International Day for Biodiversity on May 22, 2022.
Be sure to support your burn zone in the Semi-Finals and show some love to your Region!
Good luck!
Fire Poppy Cup observations of the week:
Check out some of the amazing observations made last week at RG and feel free to check out the rest here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2022-05-09&d2=2022-05-15&order_by=votes&place_id=any&project_id=california-fire-followers-2020&quality_grade=research&verifiable=any&iconic_taxa=Plantae
Top left: Fire Poppy (Papaver californicum) © velodrome, (CC-BY) @velodrome
Top Middle: Scarlet Fritillary (Fritillaria recurva) © Susan Fawcett, (CC-BY-NC) @susanfawcett
Top Right Shirley Meadows Star-Tulip (Calochortus westonii) © Jacob Smith, (CC-BY-NC-ND) @plantsarecool
Bottom left: Mount Diablo Fairy-Lantern (Calochortus pulchellus) © Joan Hamilton, (CC-BY-NC) @joan_hamilton
Bottom Middle: Golden Eardrops (Ehrendorferia chrysanth) © Morgan Stickrod, (CC-BY-NC) @morganstickrod
Bottom Right: Red Ribbons (Clarkia concinna ssp. concinna) © Morgan Stickrod, (CC-BY-NC)
CA Fire Poppy Cup: Quarter Final Recap
Tuesday, May 24:
Hello everyone, I hope you all had a fantastic weekend and had an opportunity to celebrate Biodiversity Day over the weekend. This last week, there were about ~800 different species observed! Check out these amazing observations of the top 5 most observed species this last week on our CA Fire Followers Project:
Winecup Clarkia (Clarkia purpurea)
© Elinor Gates (@egates), some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
Red Ribbons (Clarkia concinna)
© @rmyoshihara, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
Yellow Mariposa Lily (Calochortus luteus)
© Lorri Gong (@lorri-gong) , some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC-ND)
Saltugilia splendens ssp. Splendens
© @poa, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Golden Yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum)
© Grigory Heaton (@gheaton), some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
Updated Scores
This week we had some surprises! Based on last week's performances, the results from this week were not what I was expecting. In our first match of the semi-finals, we had two complexes face off against each other. The CZU Lightning Complex was able to beat the LNU Lightning Complex by recording 2x more species in total! As a reminder, the LNU Lightning Complex was able to beat the Glass Fire last round which is no easy task. This time however, naturalists in the Coastal region were able to come out and take their region to the Finals for the first time!
On the other side of the bracket, we had another surprise! Last week, the Valley Fire did an incredible job at outperforming every other burn area when it came to getting observations to RG. Unfortunately, this week was not enough to beat the Creek Fire. The Creek Fire barely took the win this round and will be moving on to the Finals for the first time. Last year, both of these burn areas were unable to make it past the Quarter-Finals, and it is great to see them both here.
Updated Bracket
Upcoming games with dates and rules |
Final: May 23 - May 30 Winner: Most Participants (identifiers+observers)
We are currently in our final week of the Fire Poppy Cup! This week's scoring method will be based off the number of participants, including identifiers and observers! As we head into Memorial Day Weekend, we encourage you all to participate in our Fire Poppy Cup and go out to some nearby burn areas to record observations. If you do not live near or unable to access a burn area this weekend, you can still participate by helping identify some of the observations on our project that still need ID: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=Plantae&project_id=98056
CA Fire Poppy Cup: Grand Final Recap
Hello everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend and have had a great start to the new month! This Memorial Day weekend, our CA Fire Followers project passed 106k observations! I hope you all had an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and a special thank you to everyone who contributed to the project this past week.
Championship Results
Our two burn area finalists performed fairly well this past week, however, there was one clear winner. This week’s competition was scored by the total number of participants, including observers and identifiers, from 5/23/22 - 5/30/22. Looking at each fire zone's individual stats, it was clear that the Creek Fire would have a tough opponent ahead being that the CZU Lightning Complex is so close to hitting 10k obsservations! This week could have been a fairytale ending if the Creek Fire pulled an upset, however, the CZU Lightning Complex took home the win with a score of 86-43.
Updated Bracket
Thanks again to everyone who contributed this month. Our Fire Followers project made ~12,000 observations in May 2022, about 1k more than last May. Check out some of the amazing observations made this weekend:https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2022-05-23&d2=2022-05-31&order_by=votes&place_id=any&project_id=california-fire-followers-2020&verifiable=any
© Sarah Wang – whi (@goflowers) , some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)
CZU Lightning Complex
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