BROOKINGS Anyone with a love for the outdoors is invited to help gather scientific data through a free phone app called iNaturalist. On July 21, Harold Armstrong a retired seed scientist will teach participants at Brookings Public Library how to use the program to document and share observations with researchers around the world.
So iNaturalist is citizen science, he said. People go on out, and they take photographs of plants, animals, birds, insects, fungi, lichens basically anything that is native and living.
Then they upload those photos into iNaturalist, identify them and have people actually verify that all these observations are the species theyve identified. Then scientists can use this to track things like are flowering dates changing with global warming, or are certain plants spreading in different areas?
The program was founded by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and is now a nonprofit joint venture of the National Geographic Society and the California Academy of Sciences.
The app is on both android and apple, and it is free, Armstrong said. Its easy to learn to use the basic functions of iNaturalist, but in order to do some of these more advanced things it takes a little more time and a little more effort.
Hes led local groups that have already enjoyed great success.
I was the point person this year for the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge, and the area that I covered was Brookings County, Armstrong said. It turns out that although we only had three people observing and five people confirming it turned out that we actually reported the third highest count per person in the United States. That was us, from Brookings County with just that small number of people participating.
Now retired, Armstrong is no stranger to the world of science.
I have an undergraduate degree in range science from Montana State University, then I got a Ph.D. in seed science and technology from Montana State, he said. My first real job once I got my masters was in seed testing labs in Illinois, Montana, Texas and here in South Dakota.
He said you dont have to be an expert to use iNaturalist and quickly start identifying different species of wildlife.
Ill also talk about some of the companion applications that are free and can help you in identifying things too, Armstrong said. And if youre struggling with iNaturalist, Ill show you how to compare reference photos in iNaturalist, and then show how to join projects, how to define areas and draw queries.
He said scientists are already using amateur-collected data to make some exciting discoveries.
(Participants with iNaturalist) have managed to take pictures of things that were thought to be extinct but are still in existence, Armstrong said.
According to the iNaturalist website, an amateur group in Papua New Guinea recently photographed a New Britain Goshawk a bird previously believed to be extinct. Armstrong said scientists are also using iNaturalist to study how climate change affects plants.
Now iNaturalist has only been going on for about 17 years or so, but they have hundreds of millions of observations worldwide, he said. They compared the flowering data for saguaro cactuses with the earliest historic plant mounts from like 100 years ago and whenever other people later took plant mounts they would also date it. So theyre trying to track that, compare and see if the flowering of saguaro cactuses are changing over time. That was actually a scientific paper that was presented.
Armstrong said hes personally uploaded some unique photos to iNaturalist, including a recent shot of a local badger.
Its very rare that you see a badger in the wild during the day, he said. Its even rarer to have them facing you so you get a beautiful full-face photo of the badger. That was one of the coolest photos Ive taken.
He said iNaturalist is a way for anyone who cares about wildlife to help make a difference.
I have always found a tight connection with plants, Armstrong said. Obviously I got so intrigued by seeds that I spent my career testing seeds and learning all that I could about seeds. I love to see plants, animals and creatures of the wild continue to flourish.
Learn more at iNaturalist.org or at Armstrongs presentation at Brookings Public Library on July 21 at 6 p.m.
Contact Jay Roe at [email protected].
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