PCHS Plants & Animals's Journal

PCHS students in AICE Environmental Management added a few more species Tuesday while they were outside learning how to sample biodiversity using quadrats.

We ran into a few limitations of the iNaturalist Project; a few students recorded observations without sharing location data, and we can't figure out a way to add those to the project. While 6th period was exploring the edge of the stream at the northeast corner of campus, some students recorded observations just outside the official boundary of the project, and those can't be added to the project either, without expanding the boundaries to all of Plant City. It would be nice if iNaturalist had a way to manually add individual observations to projects.

On the first day of this project, PCHS APES students collected 42 observations of 24 species. 5 observations are already "Research Grade" quality, which means they've been verified by experts! Of those 24 species, we documented 18 plants, 2 insects, 1 fish, 1 bird, 1 insect, and 1 mammal (Homo sapiens!).

This was a fun "last day of school" activity, and I look forward to next year's students building on the project.