In April 2021 iNaturalistUK became a formal member of the iNaturalist Network, a move supported by the NBN Trust, Biological Records Centre (BRC) and the Marine Biological Association (MBA). It’s now two years on and an opportunity to review progress to date.
Since 2021 the NBN Trust has been helping to promote and develop the platform for UK users. Over 2 million observations of an additional 4,000 species have been added to iNaturalistUK in that time. The reasons for this include the rise in participation in events such as the City Nature Challenge as well as it becoming a more well known tool embraced by organisations keen to engage new wildlife recorders.
Increases on iNaturalistUK since launch:
When we, the NBN Trust, took on the lead role for iNaturalistUK we wanted to ensure that it was embedded as part of the range of recording tools available to the UK biological recording community. It would be a tool to complement the existing established platforms such as iRecord, iSpot and BirdTrack among others. The BRC has been key in working with the recording community to enable this and, for example, data from iNaturalistUK now regularly flows to iRecord for verification and when possible is added to the NBN Atlas.
In September 2021 we held the first iNaturalistUK User Group meeting. These are an opportunity for regular users to come together and share experiences and feedback. Records of those meetings and video presentations are available in the iNaturalistUK hub; where you can also sign up to be part of the group. We are keen to hear from you on suggestions of topics to cover and if you would like to share your experiences, so we’d love you to get involved!
Early on a number of key themes that affect UK users specifically, came up for discussion. These included the licensing of observation records and location accuracy.
Licensed to share
All wildlife observation records need to be assigned a creative commons licence so that they can be shared with data portals such as NBN Atlas or Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
The default licence, set by iNaturalist globally for all users, is CC-BY-NC and most new users will use this setting. However, to ensure an observation can be used as widely as possible in the UK the ideal is that it is given a CC0 or CC-BY licence. This blog sets out how to check and update your licence.
The following pie chart shows the records by licence type.
See current stats on GBIF here.
We are working hard to promote the best use of licences and you will find it mentioned in the “About” section on iNaturalistUK, in blog posts, as a note in the footer of notification emails and within City Nature Challenge guides. Please take the time to review your settings and if you run training events or produce training guides please ensure it’s mentioned. The local environmental record centres will thank you for it!
Location
Location accuracy still remains a concern for some people and it is up to users to ensure that they are using and checking the locations. You can read more about this in one of our blog posts. It really is worth taking a bit of time to review your observation list and if you spot vague locations, please take the opportunity to adjust the location point. The more open the geoprivacy location can be, the more useful the observations – especially for wildlife with quite specific habitat needs. If you tend to be a dedicated app user it is worth exploring the functions available on the iNaturalistUK website which will allow you to batch edit your observations.
A good spot!
The use of projects is a popular function for iNaturalistUK users. For example, the BIAZA, Spotted on Site, has really encouraged visitors and staff at the zoos and aquariums across the UK to monitor their native wildlife. You can see how they are getting on here.
The Dipterists Forum has embraced the project tool as an aid to help with identifications. By setting up individual projects for the various species it’s easier for enthusiasts to find and interact with other dipterist recorders. You can see all the observations here.
In addition, Caring for God’s Acre is encouraging users to report sightings from burial grounds. These will then be added to the Beautiful Burial Grounds portal, which was developed within the NBN Atlas and is pioneering the use of the NBN Atlas for a specific project
Future Activities
Despite many successes over the last two years, we recognise that there is still much more we could do! We are therefore working to secure funding to allow us to dedicate more resources to management and promotion of iNaturalistUK.
These include:
- Provision of bespoke training guides
- Working with the Natural History Museum, Royal Horticultural Society and others to use iNaturalistUK in the National Education Nature Park
- Working with verifiers and the iRecord community to help enhance the records flowing through to iRecord.
- Undertaking an in depth analysis of iNaturalistUK observations and users
Thank you and join us!
Thank you to everyone who has used iNaturalistUK and supported the NBN Trust, BRC and the MBA over the last two years, we really appreciate it. To those who are yet to try it or who would like to get more involved, why not join the iNaturalistUK user group and sign up to the mailing list. Alternatively, for more information or if you have any queries, please email us inaturalistuk@nbn.org.uk We look forward to hearing from you!