Cherokee BioBlitz 2023's Journal

Our Cherokee BioBlitz is officially over! Thank you to everybody that participated this summer and contributed to cataloging our home’s biodiversity! Here’s our wrap-up:

As of August 1st, there were 2,129 observations made in Cherokee County by 214 different observers! Of those observations, we found over 920 different species. The most common taxon group identified were Insects, which make up 41.49% of identified species in this project.

However, the top 5 most observed species only contain one insect! They were:

1. American Toad (Anaxyrus americanus), 34 observations
2. White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), 17 observations
3. Japanese Beetle (Popillia japonica), 15 observations
4. Common Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina), 14 observations
5. Carolina Ruellia (Ruellia caroliniensis), 14 observations

It’s so cool to see so many native species in the list! The only introduced species on the list is the Japanese Beetle, and the rest are native to Georgia and the United States.

There were observations made all over the county, from the edges of Ball Ground in the north to the southern border in Acworth! However, Woodstock and Canton took the lead with the most number of observations: Woodstock had 793 observations, and Canton had 578.

Here are our top 10 observers!

1. metroatlantanatives (578 observations)
2. fart_monster87 (167 observations)
3. captainmantis37 (116 observations)
4. taco2000 (89 observations)
5. herpfaerie (71 observations)
6. northerly (59 observations)
7. ashleymhendel (54 observations)
8. syclneyb (54 observations)
9. nativewitch (52 observations)
10. skitterbug (48 observations)

Finally, compared to the period of June 1st through July 31st from 2022, there was an 8.8% increase in observations in Cherokee County during the same period this year! Last year there were 1,957 verifiable observations, and this year there were 2,129. We hope some of that increase was because of this project!

Remember, you can still identify observations and help move them into the Research Grade category even though the project is over! There are still over 1,100 observations in our project that need identification. Even if you don’t know the exact species, it can still help to identify the taxon you’re most confident of.

Thank you for your participation this year! We hope you keep using iNaturalist and continue your journey as a citizen scientist!