We had a great gathering last night at National Geographic with 31 people! Thank you to everyone who came to help add identifications and even more observations from the BioBlitz.

There's still plenty to do! Invite someone else who was involved in BioBlitz to join this project and join the NPS Servicewide project for future updates (like this journal post). Then keep chipping away at the BioBlitz observations that still need ID.

Here's a link to some photos from last night's event.

Thanks to @alisongreenberg @bbot20008 @ccforbes @conniedurnan @danbeaupre @deroche @ehurme @hughmcguinness @jhammock @treegrow @krista_schlyer @lynnparsons @maggiez @moboyle @thebirdist @paulollig @suzanne11 @tblueitt @vincent12 @yolanda-v @jfrancis @audreykr @pennibear @briesmith @stella20009 who attended and @joem50 @rgauzagronert @forester93 @alliepetersen @geobudde @biogeek5 who were there in spirit!

Want to see how the parks across the country stack up in terms of observations? Check out the map of data from the NPS Servicewide Project. The iNaturalist blog has a post up about it too.

On Wednesday, August 24th we're hosting a gathering to make one last big push on identifications for BioBlitz observations before the NPS centennial. Registered Pro-Observers and Experts should have received an invitation this afternoon. If you didn't and you're interested in attending, please message me as soon as possible.

It's a bring-your-laptop-and-identify kind of event, so come prepared! Feel free to bring guide books or other useful identification aids. We'll have light refreshments, including cupcakes to help celebrate the birthday of the National Park Service, which is the following day.

Space is limited, so please respond ASAP if you would like to attend. Hope to see you there!

At the closing ceremony on Saturday, May 21, @jfrancis and Ray Sauvajot announced the count at 886 species. Since then, thanks to your help, the count is up to 1,177 species as of this writing. It is also exciting to see that 20% of observations have reached research-grade status, which means they have gotten ID confirmation at the species level. There are still 4,348 observations from the BioBlitz that need ID confirmation or refinement so be sure to check them out (more about that new identification interface here).

If you haven't already, please check if all of the observations that you expect to be in this project are indeed in this project. If not, the first thing you should check is that your observations have coordinates that fall within the boundaries of the NPS units in the National Capitol Region. Feel free to message me directly if you have questions or problems.

The BioBlitz evaluation team would also love your feedback and you have a chance to win a $50 gift card if you complete the survey. You should have received an email from Ardice Hartry about the survey if you registered for BioBlitz in advance. In case you missed it, here are links to the two types of surveys:
Inventory leaders and Pro-Observers
Inventory participants

Remember to keep adding observations from our National Parks because they all count towards the 2016 servicewide total. iNaturalist has continued to improve the new upload tool on the website that streamlines the process of adding observations.

Thank you for helping make the long-term impact of BioBlitz the best that it can be!