Hello;
We're running another bioblitz, Sept. 15-18, to keep the iNaturalist momentum going. Pretty much the same rules as the June bioblitz - feel free to join the project and participate.
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/fall-2022-alaska-biodiversity-challenge
Greg Pohl
volunteer bioblitz coordinator
The results for the June bioblitz are now in. From June 9 - 12, we had a total of 2303 observations, of 750 species, by 304 different observers. That's pretty awesome considering this bioblitz was set up at the last minute with very little publicity.
We were in a friendly competition with 71 other municipalities from Wyoming to Alaska; for that we compared observations and observers per capita as of June 19, so our numbers at that time were 1781 observations (0.00242 observations per AK resident) by 266 observers (0.000361 participants per AK resident). Quite a few AK observations were posted after that June 19 deadline; they're still part of the bioblitz results, just not part of the competition.
Congratulations to Bear Lake County, ID who win the observations contest with 344 observations (0.0540 obs/resident); and Clark county, ID with a whopping 3 participants but with a tiny population of only 827 residents, they're the winners of the participation contest with 0.00362 participants per resident.
Alaska had two "Super iNatters" - people who racked up 200+ observations, and/or 100+ species. Congratulations to @radinis with 231 observations and 94 species (technically they were submitted after June 19, too late for the regional contest but still in our unofficial totals), and @paul_norwood with 202 observations and 131 species.
We set up this project as part of a series of summer bioblitzes, across western Canada and northwestern USA. We hope to run spring, summer and fall bioblitzes every year, so hopefully we can do a little publicity before the next one, scheduled for Sept. 15-18, 2022.
If you're interested in coordinating this or another bioblitz in western Canada, get in touch with me.
Greg Pohl - iNat user @gpohl
volunteer bioblitz coordinator
Hi all;
I hope you enjoyed participating in the Biodiversity Challenge. The unofficial results for western Canada and Alaska are as follows:
British Columbia: 15830 observations, 2805 species, 1680 observers.
Alberta: 7385 observations, 1447 species, 624 observers
Saskatchewan: 1969 observations, 659 species, 181 observers
Manitoba: 2362 observations, 639 species, 110 observers
Alaska: 1799 observations, 661 species, 272 observers
Yukon Territory: 322 observations, 171 species, 52 observers
Northwest Territories: 63 observations, 52 species, 19 observers
overall total: 29730 observations, 4135 species, 2913 observers
That is a lot of people appreciating nature over 4 days, and a lot of valuable observations. I'll send out a note with the final species counts, after 6 more weeks of identifications. We'll keep track of these results, and see if more people get involved in future years. Additionally the data will be on iNaturalist permanently, where it will help scientists to track changing species distributions and do other research. Our underlying goals are to get more people engaged with nature, and to generate useful data while they're at it.
Also note that we're planning a fall bioblitz in September 2022, and hope to coordinate similar spring, summer and fall bioblitzes every year.
A number of cities and municipalities organized more localized projects, as well as a friendly competition to see which municipality could get the highest participation rate and number of observations and species. Participating municipalities included forest districts in BC, and major cities in AB, SK, and MB (as well as many counties in nwUSA). The state of Alaska was entered into this competition, and ended up with the highest number of observers (266) and runner-up for number of observations (1781), both tabulated early monday morning (earlier than the unofficial numbers above, done 2 days later). If you would like to administer a local bioblitz in your area next year, please get in touch with me.
Greg Pohl
volunteer bioblitz coordinator
