2023 Tallahassee Florida Region City Nature Challenge's Journal

Hi 2023 Bioblitz folks, the time is nigh. There are officially 691 “Cities” signed up for the 2024 CNC Bioblitz.
9 Cities in Florida this year! Let’s get out there a little more than we usually do on those 4 days!
Mark your calendars.

But also “Join” the project OK! Here’s the project link:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/2024-north-florida-south-georgia-city-nature-challenge

We’re just 2 weeks out. Tell your friends, paste the link into your social media, spread the word!
Thanks so much!

Hi all, still lots of you haven’t signed up for this year’s CNC in April. Here’s the link:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/2024-north-florida-south-georgia-city-nature-challenge

Hoping these two upcoming events will generate some community interest:
I’m doing an event at the Senior Center piggy-backing on a promotional event, Monday Jan 8.
I’m teaching an INaturalist course, 3 classes at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute, Feb-March.

Hi folks, don’t forget to join the 2024 CNC. While it might be a little early to be telling people already, I do so to keep it on your radar. Name of the bioblitz to join in the preceding journal message.

As to HELPING…. Please spread the word to your people and encourage them to participate.

Thanks!

Hello everyone,
Many thanks to everyone who participated in the 2023 Challenge in April 2023, by making observations or identifications, or both! We need you all, and then some, for the Challenge in 2024!! We did pretty well, finishing 118th of 482 "Cities" worldwide.

Mark your calendars, the dates are April 26-29, 2024. A few days will follow for getting you observations loaded up and identitications made.

You can help me organize, PLEASE! Basically, we need to recruit folks to participate. I spent many many hours sending messages through iNaturalist to get our 92 people. I simply cannot do all that again. However, I'm calling on you now, here, to join, and help with organizing and recruiting. Text me a message that you can help!!! 850-570-6125

I'm going to be teaching an iNaturalist course at FSU's Olli program, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which will be 3 2-hour classes. Dates and times in the February-April time frame, 2024, TBA.

The 2024 Challenge can be found in Projects, under the "Community" tab in the desktop version. Look for "2024 North Florida & South Georgia City Nature Challenge", and hit JOIN, asap please!!

Duplicating the 2023 Challenge does NOT also copy its participants over, so I have to get everyone recruited all over again. Please sign up asap. At some point, comunication throiugh this specific Forum will end, and will pick up in the new Project

Check out my FaceBook group, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1031577234909296 for some communications and participation there.

Today was the first iNaturalist Zoom meeting for organizers of the 2024 City Nature Challenge. There are already 5 other Challenge "Cities" signed up!

HELLO BIOBLITZ PEEPS!
Below is the email just received from the CNC Team in CA, about the 2023 results. I'm sorry if the spreadsheet they cite doesn't work for you, I dunno if the copy/paste from email to this Journal will highlight the link. I'm scrambling to get out of town and haven't time to research that just now.

Two things of note:

1. The 2024 Date is set! April 27-30, mark your calendars. Hope you can make it. I'd like to establish an Organizer's meeting and Committee to help out for the next year. I NEEDED HELP, as I did this alone except for some advise and connections/promotions from/by Peter Kleinhenz who organized the one in 2019. Clearly we could generate bigger numbers and have more folks involved but I need help to get folks into it. Please reach out to me at my personal email: iaskevold@gmail.com if you can maybe help me with the next one! TIA!

2. Our own Blitz #s:
   Observations: 3,846
   Species: 1,263
   Observers: 232
   Identifiers: 413
   % to Research Grade: 72.65
   As to other details, please visit the CNC Bioblitz Project, surf around the page, see its stats.

HERE IS THE EMAIL FROM THE INATURALIST TEAM IN Los Angeles AND San Francisco
Hope you can figure out the "link" they sent, I've not looked at that yet.

Hello amazing CNC organizers!

We did it! The 8th annual City Nature Challenge is done! Thank you so much for all your time, effort, and hard work in making this event as successful as it is – we literally could not do it without you! We've been up all night gathering each city's numbers as it became 9am, Monday May 8 for each of you. With our two Hawaiian cities finally getting their Monday started, we have the full results to share! Here are the collective results:

Observations: 1,870,763
Species: 57,227+, including more than 2,570 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 66,394
Most-observed species globally: Mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos)
And congratulations to our “top” cities:

The Top 5 are listed per 3 criteria:
Observations
Species
Observers

1st Place
La Paz, Bolivia: 126,435
La Paz, Bolivia: 5,344
La Paz, Bolivia: 3,025

2nd Place
Cape Town, South Africa: 52,518
Hong Kong, SAR, China: 4,469
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA: 2,488

3rd Place
Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, USA: 48,021
Cosalá, Sinaloa, Mexico: 3,912
Los Angeles County, California, USA: 1,671

4th Place
Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico: 42,479
Cape Town, South Africa: 3,847
Monterrey Zona Metropolitana, Mexico: 1,655

5th Place
Houston-Galveston, Texas, USA: 41,736
Houston-Galveston, Texas, USA: 3,707
Washington DC Metro Area, USA: 1,527

Congrats organizers! This marks three years in a row we've made more than one million observations in four days. That’s a reflection of all the time and hard work all of you have put into making the CNC happen in your community. Whether your city made 100 observations or 10,000 observations, we are so grateful to have you as a CNC organizer.

We've linked to and attached some resources to help you look through the results and communicate them to your city's participants:

CNC 2023 Results Workbook: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K5RxZ84VW-HttvGyrf2dv6M3ev6OJwUymWxxr8wUX28/copy] When you click this link, Google will ask you to make a copy of this workbook – this way you can sort the results in the ways that help you best see your city’s results, and you won’t change anything for anyone else! There are multiple spreadsheets in this workbook, and all the columns of each sheet have a filter on them so you can sort each sheet to look at the data in different ways:

Collective results: the combined numbers across cities and platforms, and includes a full list of all the countries with participating cities

City Numbers: the official numbers from each city (collected at 9am, Monday, May 9 for each city). There are three groups of numbers for each city: (1) the TOTAL observations, species, identifiers, and observers; (2) the VERIFIABLE (has evidence, not captive/cultivated) observations, species, identifiers, and observers; (3) the RESEARCH GRADE (verifiable and has community consensus on the ID) observations, species, identifiers, and observers

Percent Verifiable and Research Grade: shows for each city the percent of TOTAL observations and species were VERIFIABLE, and the percent of the VERIFIABLE observations and species that have become RESEARCH GRADE. (Note: if your platform wasn't an iNaturalist platform, then you'll just have the first set of numbers - the TOTAL ones.)

Average # of Observations per Observer: for each city, the TOTAL observations divided by the TOTAL observers to show the average number of observations each observer made

Hemisphere/Climate: Includes all the numbers listed above for each city, and each city has been classified by its climate type and if it's in the northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, or the tropics (between the Tropics of Cancer & Capricorn). Use this sheet if you're interested to see how your city compared to other cities that are in your climate zone (and thus may have been experiencing similar seasonality/weather during the CNC).

Population: The results with categories for the total population that lives inside of the boundaries for each city. Useful if you’d like to compare your city’s results with other cities that have similar population sizes. This was self-reported, so if a cell is blank or seems wrong, it’s because the organizer didn’t fill this out or put the wrong number in our city info spreadsheet (we tried to correct some of them, but didn’t have time to do them all).

Area (km2): The results with size categories for the total area included within the boundaries for cities. Useful if you’d like to compare your city’s results with other cities that covered similar amounts of area. This was self-reported, so if a cell is blank or seems wrong, it’s because the organizer didn’t fill this out or put the wrong number in our city info spreadsheet (we tried to correct some of them, but didn’t have time to do them all).

MASTER: Includes all the total, verifiable, and research grade numbers listed above for each city and includes the links we used to get the "City Numbers" stats

NOTE: if you see any mistakes with the stats for your city, let us know ASAP. We apologize for any mis-typed results–we did stay up all night to gather them, so in our sleepy state we may have entered a wrong number somewhere. We'll change the results and you can make another copy of the results workbook that will have the corrected numbers.

CNC 2023 Infographic: highlighting the collective results and interesting finds from around the world. We wish we could've included more interesting finds–there were so many! We had a great time looking through all of them & seeing the incredible biodiversity in all the different places we all call home. We’ve attached it as a pdf, a png image, and you can also use this link if you want to post it in your CNC project journal:

Also feel free to make an infographic highlighting your city’s results! It’s easy in platforms like Canva (where the infographic above was made). Here’s an example from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Look for an email next week: Next week we’ll send out the CNC organizer video (thank you to everyone that made & uploaded a video for it!), a survey to gather your thoughts and feedback about this year’s CNC, and a sign-up sheet for our (optional) debrief meeting that will be happening in early June!

Next year’s City Nature Challenge: April 27-30, 2024 – put it on your calendar!

Thanks so much,

Alison, Lila, Amy, Olivia, and Sam

Good afternoon Peeps!!! Time is almost up!!! The 2023 CNC is almost in the books!

Even this afternoon, I still see observations being loaded in... Even late this afternoon (4:00 PM), I see new uploads, and even some new IDs made.

Get your remaining observations upoaded please, cuz almost nobody will be looking at them to confirm or correct... 09:00 tomorrow, Monday, is the drop dead time, but for all practical purposes, at that late hour it is likely nobody will be looking at the the straggler uploads to confirm and turn them into useable numbers that will count! Research Grade is the target! These are much appreciated!!!! Give it your best shot to get observations and IDs completed!!!

As to IDs, there are still 24 "Pages" in the "Identify" module in the Project, maybe some of you can put names on them , or confirm the names that have been suggested?!

Tomorrow afternoon, I hope to have time to make the Final Report available to you all. The iNaturalist CNC folks will be compiling the data after the 09:00 cut-off, and we'll see where we land in the global scheme! I'm very pleased with the results and efforts everyone has made to the 2023 CNC Bioblitz, you've all made me proud and really glad I decided to try to make this happen. MANY THANKS!

Hello peeps, we're getting down to the tough stuff, namnely, identifications! WE HAVE 3 MORE DAYS TO PUSH!!

I've gone twice through the 30+ "pages" of observations that are not yet "Research Grade" and done pretty much all I can do! What I know of birds I did, though most were done by the birders very quickly, thank you to those folks. Jay Horn, with over 302,000 identifications (!!!) overall, and 751 for this blitz, did a ton of plants and I also did some confirmations of his IDs, as did so many others. Marcie Praetorius also went above and beyond, well done! The Darsts also did super well. Any of you knowledgeable in plants, please have another go-through these!! Need someone who knows the non-vascular plants, like algae and bryophytes!!

Mushroomers!!! We need some of you to chime in and have a go at the fungi! Lots of those left. Lichens too... I know one person to reach out to.

INSECTS!!! (and other arthropods) I knew these would be very tough to get names. Some folks have really great photos, which is truly commendable, thanks so much! While I'm an entomologist first, I just can't get species names, I'm afraid. If you know anyone you can sit down with to go through these critters, please drag them into the game. I'm going to reach out to some folks I know too but we're running out of time. Trouble with insects is, the internet doesn't have enough photos and data for iNaturalist to draw upon, so if you look at suggestions, there's rather little and certainly not enough to pick from. We might just not be able to get past genus, I'm afraid, for anything other than butterflies and some moths and dragonflies...

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR MAKING THIS TALLAHASSEE REGION CNC BIOBLITZ A GREAT SUCCESS!!!

Hello everyone! Great production out of you all, it's so appreciated. Especially our identifiers, and most especfially user "Jayhorn" are soooo apreciated for his encyclopedic knowledge and tons of identifications of plants!! I love the email I get every morning that lists the IDs obtained for my stuff. Thanks, all!

Looks like new observations are slowing down, so I guess you've all pretty much gotten your photos loaded up. Just to remind, we have until Monday May 8 at 09:00 PST, or 06:00 EST. Best bet to get your observations included, get them loaded up asap to give everyone else has an opportunity to help make and confirm or correct identifications. Any can be added after this date/time, but they will no longer count in the blitz.

Right now, we're at 67.36% Research Grade identifications, but it'd be great if folks can make another pass or two through the observations, filter for Need Verification so you don't have to look through everything, it'll be a shorter list. While I think 67% is great, there is room for improvement. I think only the RG identifications count as far as the Blitz totals go.

I've gone through all the the "Unknowns" and provided some identifications, but at least to organism group, so they'll now pop in your filtered group of interest.

Hello folks, we’re just under 12 hours from the CNC bioblitz starting line! We are 85 participants strong! Personally, I’ve drafted my itinerary that, rain or shine, will put me in many habitats, from freshwater and marine to various upland habitats, in some half dozen counties, morning to near dark! Let’s remember, we’re looking for wild organisms only, so if you’re observing in your own yard or nearby, city parks etc., that’s all things you didn’t intentionally plant. Any wild organisms, alive or dead!

• 4 days of observing gives you till Monday midnight to take your photos.
• 4 days following gives you time to finish uploading the photos you ran out of time to do sooner.
• The same 4 days gives us all time to identify both our own and anyone else’s observations and to confirm the IDs that were made.
• Identifications can be made by anyone, and it takes 2 identifications to make observations Research Grade, which is what counts!

Happy hunting!

Uploading batched observations! Apologies if this comes across as totally obvious or too long.

Say you’ve been out traveling and can’t timely upload your pix using your iPhone, or there’s no internet there, or can’t download from your fancy digital camera. To do batch uploads you must first download pix to your PC. Then go to iNaturalist on your PC. This is what folks have done, when you see they’ve just loaded up 50 observations in a matter of a few minutes! Metadata from your phone’s photos are uploaded automatically.

1. Log into iNaturalist on your computer. I make a temp folder in my Downloads folder, then download the photos from my phone using it as an external drive plugged into a USB port. But you can do it however you like to do it. Just be sure all your photos are downloaded.
2. One issue I’ve discovered is that a few photos will download in some weird and unusable format. It’s worth double-checking to ensure all your photos are in fact uploaded, that some are not “thought of” by your PC as “corrupted”. These ones I’ll have to email to myself from the phone and download that way.
   
3. Click “Upload” = top right green arrow button
4. Click “Choose files” = big blue button center of screen.
5. Find the folder containing your photos
6. Select all the photos you want to upload and click “Open”.
   

7. All your photos are now uploaded, each one a separate observation. Now, to combine the ones that belong together in the same observation.
   a. Using drag-and-drop, combine your multiple photos per observation, dragging each one onto the one you want as the Default primary photo.
   b. Note the 1st observation now shows a ¼ or 2/3 etc in the center; see right left arrows at the sides to scroll through them to confirm they are the right ones!

8. Now, click on the “Species Name” box and let it load suggestions. Do your best to identify to some level. Never select “Unknown”. Is it safe to assume that you will know if it’s an insect or fungus or plant?

9. Add any notes to the Notes box.
   a. In the case of mushrooms and what not, these can be important characteristics to include, such as “growing on oak stump”.
   b. I’ll include geographic information such as “St. Marks Headwaters Greenway”, which is more specific than “Leon County” that’s selected by default when iNat cannot find a more specific “Place”. Simply copy & paste that note into all the other observations made there.

10. When all done, review and click “Submit ## observations”, top right below your name!
11. Now, your observations will be uploaded using today’s date, with the actual date of the observation included in the middle of the list. The mobile look will be quite different from the PC, of course.