Diario del proyecto South Australian iNaturalists

Archivos de Diario para enero 2020

jueves, 02 de enero de 2020

Native Orchids: NOSSA Cages and Tags


The Native Orchid Society of South Australia has produced a short article "Caged For A Reason" explaining the function of cages placed around Orchids of threatened species. If you do encounter a cage in the field, avoid disturbing it. If you do find one that appears to have been moved or damaged, consider reporting it to NOSSA.
Publicado el jueves, 02 de enero de 2020 a las 11:48 PM por cobaltducks cobaltducks | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

SA iNaturalists - December 2019 Update











Publicado el jueves, 02 de enero de 2020 a las 11:55 PM por cobaltducks cobaltducks | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

viernes, 03 de enero de 2020

iNat Year in Review & City Nature Challenge 2020


With 2019 over, the iNaturalist Year in Review stats page is now available. The month of April producing almost 2 million observations, many of which were due to the annual iNat City Nature Challenge that included 159 cities in 2019. This year several Australian cities have signed up to the challenge for the first time, including Sydney, Geelong, Redlands City, and Greater Adelaide. You can sign up for the City Nature Challenge: Greater Adelaide HERE which runs from April 24th to 27th.

A 2019 Year in Review page is also available for iNaturalist Australia with over 319,000 observations of 18,500 species.

Personal Year in Review pages can also be created by pasting the following URL into your browser, and adding your username in place of "username". If you have not generated this page before, you will need to click "Generate Stats". If you have created it before, you may need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Regenerate Stats" to ensure the page is up to date.

Personal Year in Review Page URL: "https://www.inaturalist.org/stats/2019/username". Feel free to share your Year in Review page in the comments section below.

Publicado el viernes, 03 de enero de 2020 a las 01:01 AM por cobaltducks cobaltducks | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

lunes, 06 de enero de 2020

Revegetation for Increased Biodiversity


Areas of high biodiversity often have the best soils for agriculture. As such only 13% of the original vegetation remains in the Adelaide & Mount Lofty Ranges (1), with the bulk of it persisting on shallow or poorer soils unsuitable for agriculture. Less than 1% of the original grasslands and shrublands remain.

With so much land already cleared, what form should any habitat restoration works take? Restoring the original vegetation community assumes we have knowledge of what was originally there, which is not always the case. Additionally, doing so does not necessarily result in maximising conservation efforts for at risk species.

Recent research by Tom Hunt on the Rufous Whistlers in the Monarto Woodlands area considers that a more diverse vegetation community than may have originally existed has the potential to support higher population densities. His findings are discussed in the BIOR December Newsletter.

The Monarto Woodlands area covering 1800 hectares was planted with local, interstate and exotic species in the 1970s in preparation for a satellite city that never eventuated. The area now supports a large range of bird species, including many that are at risk in the Mount Lofty region. Approximately half the species of birds inhabiting the Mount Lofty region are predicted to go regionally extinct based on the size of the remaining habitat. Areas such as the Monarto Woodlands can provide a refuge for some of these species.

As of 2016 much of the area now forms the Monarto Woodlands Conservation Park.

A popular birding spot known as “Browns Road” just outside of Callington is a good spot to see a number of these less common bird species. This area is near Monarto Woodlands CP, but doesn’t seem to be part of the Conservation Park. An iNat collection project has been set up for this location: Birding Hot Spot - Brown's Road, Monarto South Australia. as has an umbrella project to bring together various Birding Hot Spots in South Australia.

To the north of Browns Road is a 550ha area of Crown land known as Frahn’s Farm where BIOR is undertaking restoration works and supporting research projects on clustered plantings, all-year-round flowering Eucalypts and Bird populations/movements. (Or if you prefer, here is a BSSA podcast on the various projects)


(1) Informing Biodiversity Conservation for the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Region South Australia, Table 2.1, Pg 13
Publicado el lunes, 06 de enero de 2020 a las 04:20 AM por cobaltducks cobaltducks | 1 comentario | Deja un comentario

New iNat Projects for South Australia


Here are the latest iNat Collection and Umbrella projects created for South Australia. Let me know if I've missed any. The original list has been updated to included these.
Umbrella Projects
Project Title (Linked Projects) (Project Members)
City of Onkaparinga NATUREhoodz   (139) (7) - An additional 31 new collections projects added for natural areas in the City of Onkaparinga, including several along the Coast to Vines Trail.
Ferals in South Australian Reserves   (18) (2) - 6 new collections projects added to record introduced species in South Australian reserves, with a total of 152 species currently recorded.
Birding Hot Spots in South Australia  (12) (3) - A new Umbrella project where users can add their favourite birding hotspots.
Collection Projects - Events
Project Title (Project Members)
City Nature Challenge: Greater Adelaide  (9) - Along with several other Australian cities, this will be the first time Australia has joined the annual iNat City Nature Challenge run in April each year, with over 150 cities around the world participating in 2019.
Publicado el lunes, 06 de enero de 2020 a las 11:16 PM por cobaltducks cobaltducks | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario

lunes, 13 de enero de 2020

City Nature Challenge: Background & First Australian Cities


The City Nature Challenge  has been running since 2016 when it was started as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco to record urban biodiversity using the iNaturalist platform. During a 7-day period, over 20,000 observations were made of 2500 species by over 1,000 participants. In 2017 the number of cities involved grew to 16, in 2018 it grew to 68 cities from various countries. In 2019 there were 159 participating cities where over 35,000 people uploaded just shy of 1 million observations over a 4 day period.

Although Australia has the 4th highest number of observations on iNaturalist, it has yet to have a city participate in the Challenge. To become a participating city requires a significant investment of time and effort, with organizers beginning preparations from as early as September the previous year. Thankfully this year several groups have stepped up.

This year, 4 Australian cities are participating in the challenge and have prepared associated iNat projects:
City Nature Challenge 2020: Sydney (NSW)
City Nature Challenge 2020: Geelong (VIC)
City Nature Challenge 2020: Redlands City (QLD)
City Nature Challenge 2020: Greater Adelaide (SA)

The challenge will run for 4 days from Friday April 24th through to Monday April 27th inclusive. Any observation taken during this time that is recorded within the area of a City Nature Challenge project will be included in the challenge results. Following this, from April 28th through to May 3rd is the identification period. This time is provided to allow participants to identify as many species as possible from the 4 day challenge period. The challenge is to see which cities can make the most observations, record the most species and engage the most people.

Of course, for South Australian residents, the City Nature Challenge 2020: Greater Adelaide is the project to join. This has been organised by Philip Roetman (@philip-roetman) and Stephen Fricker (@stephen169). The area included (following local government area boundaries) extends from the Murray River mouth, across Lake Alexandrina, up the river, around Murray Bridge, across toward Mount Torrens, up past Kapunda, across to the north of Thompson Beach and along the coast back to the Murray River mouth.


200108 - CNC Greater Adelaide Map


April has been the challenge month since the City Nature Challenge began as this coincides with the Northern Hemisphere Spring. Unfortunately for us this means the challenge will occur in Autumn and we will miss out of recording the tremendous emergence of life in our Spring. However this shouldn't dissuade us, as in 2019 Cape Town, South Africa recorded both the most observations and most species in the challenge, beating out many cities experiencing Springtime.
As the event date gets closer I'll post a general guide on how contribute to the City Nature Challenge 2020: Greater Adelaide project, with some finer details on the challenge. In the meantime, sign up to the Greater Adelaide project and follow the Facebook page. Also sign up to the associated City Nature Challenge 2020: Australia umbrella project.
Publicado el lunes, 13 de enero de 2020 a las 08:49 PM por cobaltducks cobaltducks | 1 comentario | Deja un comentario