Author Archives: Marie Smoyer

I thoroughly enjoyed working on the Biodiversity in Pennsylvania project hosted by iNaturalist. Along with sharing the project with my family and bystanders I shared this with my coworkers. The rangers were helpful identifying and finding places to photograph observations. One ranger helped me to find an app, PictureThis, to help me with primary identifications.Continue reading “Using the Biodiversity Project in the future”

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. TheContinue reading “Interactions with others.”

I was doing research for another class on my local watershed and I came across another citizen science project. Pennsylvania iMapInvasives program is designed to help natural resource professionals by providing an online platform to share invasive species sighing and management efforts as well as offering training resources. Data collection is very important to control andContinue reading “iMapInvasives”

I have enjoyed taking observations and have made it a part of my life. I have taken a few day trips to Reading, Philadelphia and walks on my local trails. It has been fun sharing my project with family and friends but also other people I have encountered. I was taking a photo of aContinue reading “Sharing with others”

I found that I needed help in identifying several observations. My pictures either weren’t clear enough or were too similar to other plants. Many of my observations were being kept at the unidentified level and I wanted to find a way to improve my observations. I downloaded an app from the play store called PictureThis.Continue reading “Picture this”

Observations can be added by the website or by the iNaturalist app. I think the app might work best in my situation. I work at Blue Marsh Lake in Pennsylvania. I am able to record observations at different times. I have free time before and after work that I might be able to record neighborhoodContinue reading “First impressions”

I chose Biodiversity of Pennsylvania as a project I wanted to contribute to. The loss of biodiversity has been a concern of the environmental movement for a considerable amount of time. Typically the oceans and tropical areas have been studied. These are ‘hot spots’ and are places of high concentrations of biodiversity. I agree theyContinue reading “Biodiversity of Pennsylvania”

iNaturalist is a citizen science project. It was started in 2008 as a Master’s final project for a group of students. In 2014, It merged with the California Academy of Sciences and in 2017, became a joint program with California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. iNaturalist is a platform that uses crowdsourcingContinue reading “iNaturalist”

I was given an assignment to find and participate in a citizen science project for my Conservation Ecology Class at Virginia Tech. Citizen Science allows the general public to participate in work under direction of a larger scientific group. I was able to find several projects in my local area, but most of them neededContinue reading “Citizen Science Project for Conservation Ecology Class and others”

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken. — Oscar Wilde. This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.