Taking photos of nature, Mary BirchemWe’re teaming up with Native Plant Salvage Foundation to host a BioBlitz on Citizen Science Day to learn more about the plants and animals that live at Darlin Creek Preserve!
A BioBlitz is an event that focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time, and uploading those observations to iNaturalist. This results in a snapshot of an area’s biodiversity. High quality data uploaded to iNaturalist become part of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an open source database used by scientists and policy makers around the world.
You can learn more about BioBlitzes and iNaturalist on Native Plant Salvage Foundation’s BioBlitz page, or just check in at our “Basecamp” at Darlin Creek Preserve on the day of our BioBlitz. We’ll have volunteers going over what makes a good observation, giving demos of iNaturalist, and answering any questions about the project.
We encourage you to focus on good photos/observations while you’re at Darlin Creek Preserve, but if you have internet/data service, you can start uploading your observations in the field, and see as they get validated by other users on iNaturalist and become research-grade. All observations from our BioBlitz (and any others from that day) will be added to a single project, which you can see here, and we’ll send out a report on the data collected!
Download iNaturalist now and join us on April 16th! Observations can be made at any time throughout the day. Volunteers from Native Plant Salvage Foundation will be available for identification and iNaturalist help between 9:30 am – 12:30 pm. Registration is not required, but we appreciate knowing if folks intend to come!
Let us know you’re coming and ask any questions with Native Plant Salvage here.
Saturday, April 16
All day, with naturalist help available between 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
Darlin Creek Preserve, Olympia. Google Map