Bad weather and recovery from a surgery have kept me inside for the most of this week. I decided to help other fellow citizen scientist. An important aspect of iNaturalist is relating to others and helping to ID species. When pictures are uploaded the community needs others to agree or disagree with the identification. The more that people have agreed or validated an identification, the higher the grade. There are three stages, unknown, casual and research grade. I took advantage of the poor weather to look at some other observations and see if I could identify or agree with others.
I am only beginning to be confident in some of my identifications, but there are several that I have made and I felt sure I would be able to locate those. It is easiest to search by species, but after looking at a number of people sharing the Spotted Lanternfly I decided to look at other observations near my home. I was able to agree with a large number of identifications, especially insects and mammals. Plants identification was a little harder and I did not know any fungi that I felt confident in agreeing or disagreeing with others identification.
It was fun to look at all of the observations that were so close to my home. It really does show how much biodiversity can be found in a small area. I would like to look at this more in the spring when I think more plant species and fish will begin to be posted.
Citizen Science Project 