The NBN Trust is excited to announce that iNaturalistUK is the newest member of the international iNaturalist Network.
A collaboration led by the NBN Trust with the Marine Biological Association (MBA) and the Biological Records Centre (BRC), iNaturalistUK joins the wealth of recording tools available to UK naturalists.
Why iNaturalist?
One of the world’s most popular nature apps, iNaturalist helps identify the plants and animals around us while being part of a growing community of scientists and naturalists.
Working with MBA and BRC, the NBN Trust will be developing ways of promoting and using iNaturalist in the UK to complement the other established recording tools already available to the biological recording community, including iRecord and iSpot.
Sharing the data
Users in the United Kingdom are encouraged to?affiliate?their account to iNaturalistUK to allow partner organisations enhanced access to UK sightings. This won’t affect existing arrangements with how sightings are currently shared to GBIF or are available to the international community. It will allow the BRC and local environmental records centres access to more detailed records.
Whilst there are currently no plans to link iNaturalistUK data directly to the NBN Atlas, over the coming months the BRC will be working with the National Recording Schemes to facilitate the integration of iNaturalistUK data within the schemes. As part of this support, it might include ways in which iNaturalistUK data could be added to the NBN Atlas, if this is something the schemes wish to do.
The MBA will be building on its extensive experience in coastal BioBlitz events to increase the wildlife records that are openly available. The NBN Trust, with its network of members, is well placed to engage with these citizen scientists and encourage greater participation in wildlife recording, particularly for groups with little previous experience.
The iNaturalist network and community
The iNaturalist community in the United Kingdom has been growing steadily over the past few years. From around 10,000 observers in early 2019 there are now more than 56,000 observers who have recorded over 15,000 species in the UK. The growth of the City Nature Challenge event in the UK has encouraged its popularity.
The iNaturalist Network now has fifteen nationally-focused sites that are fully connected and interoperable with the global iNaturalist site. These include Naturalista Colombia, iNaturalist Australia, iNaturalist Israel, iNaturalist Finland, and iNaturalist Luxembourg, and now iNaturalist United Kingdom.
Any iNaturalist user can log in on any of the sites using their same username and password and will see the same notifications. All data from all network sites are still shared globally and fully accessible from each site using search filters.
Find out more
Find out more by visiting the iNaturalistUK information pages on the NBN Trust website.