#5: Every Observation a Discovery: How iNaturalist Changes Lives and Changes Science

Have you ever seen a bird or a tree, and wondered what it is? Why did that bird show up here? How come I've never seen that tree anywhere else?

Just a few years ago, you'd need to consult an expert or spend loads of time reviewing field guides and natural history books to get those answers.

Today, the answers are at your fingertips. And with curiosity comes the satisfaction of learning.

Explore the transformative power of the iNaturalist app through the journeys of Jennifer Rycenga, a humanities professor turned nature enthusiast, Joseph Montes de Oca, a high school foreign languages teacher,  and Cat Chang, an  architecture professor and now, an iNaturalist board member.

Hear how this technology is connecting millions globally, from identifying species to contributing to vital science databases.

And learn how YOU can join the movement and start your own adventure today!

>>> See the full show notes and images on jumpstartnature.com<<<  

 Beyond a podcast, Jumpstart Nature is a movement fueled by volunteers, igniting a fresh approach to reconnecting people with the natural world. In the face of our pressing climate and biodiversity challenges, we're on a mission to help you discover newfound purpose and motivation.

Join us in this vital journey towards nature's revival. Explore more and show your support at jumpstartnature.com, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and  YouTube.

Links to Topics Discussed
The City Nature Challenge
Alison Young's Nature's Archive interview about the City Nature Challenge
Eastern Grey Squirrel observations on iNaturalist - A North American species that has been introduced in many places around the world
How-to Use iNaturalist: Mobile Phone, Website, and iNaturalist's in-depth videos
The Yard of the Future - Jumpstart Nature podcast episode from last season

CREDITS
This podcast episode was written, edited, and produced by Michael Hawk. Our host and co-writer is Griff Griffith.

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Imagefilm 033 by Sascha Ende
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/535-imagefilm-033
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Mystical Autumn by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9755-mystical-autumn
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Transcript

[00:00:00] Griff Griffith: Picture this. You're out for a hike, or even just hanging out in the park, and you're surrounded by trees and the gentle hum of nature.

[00:00:07] Suddenly You spot a colorful bird perched on a branch that's stretching out over the trail. Would you wonder what species it is? Where it came from? Why it's there? It's a fleeting moment of curiosity, easily brushed aside amidst the rush of daily life. But what if I told you there's a way to unlock the mysteries of the natural world right at your fingertips?

[00:00:31] Joseph Montes de Oca: when you get a name to a species, it's something that you care a little bit more about, right? Knowledge is power

[00:00:37] Griff Griffith: Curiosity about nature is core to who we are as people, but for too long, we've shoved the curiosity aside in the name of productivity or progress, but there's a growing community rediscovering this connection.

[00:00:51] Their lives are changing in amazing ways and science and biodiversity. are benefiting Surprisingly, this is thanks to an incredible piece of technology. That's like having a team of experts right in your pocket.

[00:01:04] I'm Griff Griffith, and welcome to Jumpstart Nature. 

[00:01:28] Michael Hawk: So all you need to do is open the app, take a picture, and with the tap of a button, it will suggest an ID for what you saw. It could be a plant, animal, insect, mushroom, whatever. 

[00:01:38] Griff Griffith: Michael was just describing how easy it is to use a mobile phone and an app called iNaturalist. Just a decade ago, this technology didn't even exist. Just three or four years ago, such technology was probably wrong or unable to suggest an identification most of the time. 

[00:01:56] Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, Any sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. In this case of iNaturalist, that sentiment rings true. It's a testament to the incredible strides we've made in harnessing the power of technology to unlock the secrets of the natural world.

[00:02:14] With nearly four million people contributing to iNaturalist and documenting close to half a million species around the world, it's more than just a tool. It's a global community of nature enthusiasts and community scientists making personal discoveries and meaningful contributions to science and conservation.

[00:02:31] And like so many transformational advances, the simplicity of iNaturalist holds profound implications that extend much further.

[00:02:38] Jennifer Rycenga: From a philosophic point of view as opposed to psychological, I believe that attention is what generates both knowledge and love. Those things to which we give attention, we end up having affection for.

[00:02:53] Griff Griffith: Jennifer Rycenga is a retired humanities professor and a self proclaimed iNaturalist power user.

[00:02:59] Jennifer Rycenga: iNaturalist began for me in 2012. my iNativersary, a term which I coined, I don't know if others use it, was August 13th, 2012. My adoption of iNaturalist happened because I came across a rattlesnake and it was the first one I had seen in my then home county of San Mateo, and I was able to get some pictures And there was a friend of mine So I thought I would submit my pictures to him and he indicated no, in fact, all pictures should now be entered into this new thing called iNaturalist

[00:03:35] Cat Chang: a lot of people come to iNaturalist with that, that question. I saw something. I'm curious about it. I saw a bee or a fly. Maybe it's a plant of some sort. You record an image and somehow you get an ID back from it.

[00:03:53] but my perspective is it's my journal. I go out, I take a fantastic walk with maybe with some friends, I see amazing things.

[00:04:04] And sometimes I want to go back and take a look at what that walk produced. And so from my perspective, I really enjoy using iNat as a journal.

[00:04:14] Griff Griffith: Cat Chang who you just heard from is an iNaturalist user and her love for nature and the app led her to join the iNaturalist board of directors, but let's pause here for a moment and explain a bit more about iNaturalist. As you probably figured out, it's a phone app that lets you take pictures of pretty much any plant, animal, fungi, slime, mold, animal, track, whatever you find.

[00:04:34] And it will then suggest an identification. Your observation is recorded in the community of iNaturalist users who can also help you figure out what you saw. Many of these users are experts in their field. Many others are enthusiasts who've obtained vast knowledge and others still are simply there to learn. And if enough people agree on the identification of whatever you uploaded, it gets a special label called research grade. And this all adds up to an incredible database for science. It's community science in action.

[00:05:03] And identification is just the first step. You can use the app to learn where and when a plant or animal is typically seen, review photos from around the world and much, much more.

[00:05:12] Jennifer Rycenga: the younger generations are aware of the depth and breadth of the ecological danger we're in. And so iNaturalist gives us a very easy tool to do that. To be doing something about that, which is recording what we're seeing.

[00:05:35] So that all of us can do that. Even if it's just your backyard, nobody else is iNaturalizing your backyard Everything is worth recording.

[00:05:43] Griff Griffith: With millions of species out there, there is a surprising amount we still don't know. 

[00:05:51] Joseph Montes de Oca: So I teach Italian and Portuguese in a public high school here in Miami. And I've been doing that since 2017. in my classes is where I have students, I assign them different cities, uh, whether they're in Brazil or Portugal, if it's in my Portuguese classes or throughout Italy. And, you know, they have to give me some information on the city, the population, the region that it's found in.

[00:06:19] But then I also incorporate iNaturalist and I ask them to go on to iNaturalist. put the website into the target language, whether it's Portuguese or Italian, and then they'll look up their city and they need to tell me the most observed mammal, the most observed bird, insect, plant.

[00:06:35] and the cool thing about iNaturalist is that it has those common names in those target languages.

[00:06:40] Griff Griffith: Instead of teaching language only through the traditional angle of human culture, Joseph Montes de Oca has incorporated natural history into his methods and the kids love it. I

[00:06:49] Joseph Montes de Oca: Yeah, it's fun. I really enjoy it. And I think the kids, enjoy it too. for example, in Milan and in Turin in Italy, one of the most observed species and the most observed mammal is, the Eastern Gray Squirrel. So that's a species, you know, we have here in North America and it's not native to Europe.

[00:07:05] And iNaturalist also has that little logo in the top right corner in kind of like a pink or purple that says IN for invasive. So we kind of talk a little bit about that. 

[00:07:14] Griff Griffith: It's iNaturalist again, prompting curiosity. 

[00:07:17] Joseph Montes de Oca: sometimes it's a slippery slope to get a little bit off topic in my classes. but you know, obviously all the kids are familiar with the Burmese Python problem that we have in the Everglades and in South Florida. So that's something that whenever that pops up, because every year I have students that do Milan and Turin, and those are always two, you know, species that kind of stand out as like, you know, hey, these, these are here.

[00:07:38] Why, why are they over there too?

[00:07:40] Griff Griffith: The idea of an invasive animal or an invasive plant is a great discussion point.

[00:07:45] Invasive is a label that generates discussion. Kind of like the label weeds.

[00:07:50] Jennifer Rycenga: My brother in law here in Rochester, he's been a gardener for a while and therefore, like all gardeners, he thought he was fighting a battle against weeds.

[00:08:00] And then through me, he started to notice that these quote unquote weeds each had names and stories.

[00:08:07] Joseph Montes de Oca: I pay a lot of attention to lawn weeds because they're everywhere and, you know, documenting the pollinators that are on them. you know, people dismiss lawn weeds as we were kind of talking about before, but they provide. So much for, for native insects and, and they provide habitat. And so getting that, you know, first thing of learning the name is super important

[00:08:30] Griff Griffith: it seems the most common definition of a weed is simply a plant that's growing somewhere where you really don't want it to grow. It could be a highly beneficial plant, even a native plant, or it might be an invasive plant that you would want to remove immediately. 

[00:08:43] As we discussed in Episode 1, The Yard of the Future. Native plants are particularly important in turning biodiversity loss around. Who knows? Maybe you have some beneficial volunteer native plants in your yard that you can just let grow.

[00:08:57] Keith Wandry: That's a raven right there. Up to the left, here it comes.

[00:09:03] Yep, nice. Nice. In a wildflower setting. Where they're supposed to be. Yeah.

[00:09:14] Somebody's I think somebody was mimicking Yeah. It's been so funny. I love those. I know. It's like 

[00:09:27] Griff Griffith: that fun you hear is from a special kind of nature scavenger hunt, often called a bio blitz. And while it might sciencey, they are loads of fun.

[00:09:39] Jennifer Rycenga: A bio blitz is a snapshot. It's a kind of snapshot in time of a given place. I also do refer to it as a flash mob for nature because it's saying, Okay, everybody, let's be at this park at this time for three hours. And we're just going to catalog everything that's here. So it's collecting people to give their attention to what is in front of them.

[00:10:06] There have been BioBlitzes for longer than there has been iNaturalist, but the grassroots BioBlitz needed a tool like iNaturalist to work.

[00:10:16] Griff Griffith: iNaturalist allows everyone to become an explorer. Some of the magic of iNaturalist is a technological advancement. They call computer vision or CV. It's a technology where computers learn to automatically recognize images and objects, but the computers have to be taught with accurate information in the first place.

[00:10:34] So as people submit their observations to iNaturalist, Not only are they contributing to a giant community science database but they are helping computer vision improve too.

[00:10:44] Cat Chang: and now they have something called the geo model, where it takes a look, is that taxa expected nearby? as of January, there were more than 83, 000 taxa in the model. 

[00:10:58] Griff Griffith: and the number and the accuracy is growing nearly every month. Thanks to continued contributions from the community. 83, 000 is an incredible amount But then again, there are 400, 000 species of beetles alone.

[00:11:11] For many plants and animals, to identify a species, it requires very close examination, sometimes beyond what a regular camera can see.

[00:11:19] Jennifer Rycenga: They say that to really get spiders to species, you have to examine their genitalia, which is a level I have not wanted to go to.

[00:11:25] Griff Griffith: Yes, that would take some dedication. I've never even imagined what spider genitalia might look like. I bring this up only to set expectations. iNaturalist is amazing, but there are some things that require DNA and microscopes to truly identify. This can be particularly challenging for birders who are used to being able to identify nearly every species if they have a good look at it.

[00:11:50] Jennifer Rycenga: for sure. I have problems with that recalibration still. I chafe against it often. I haven't allowed it to slow me down, though. I will still take pictures, especially of flies. they say that the diptera are largely unidentifiable. But, who else is taking a picture of the flies then? I might as well.

[00:12:09] If you read a list of the birds that people thought were unidentifiable in the field, say around 1900, you can see many of them are now.

[00:12:16] For instance, female Eurasian and American Wigeon. We know how to do that now. It takes some work, you have to study it, but you can do it. So maybe one day, This is part of my attitude to iNaturalist, that there's a lot we can do on iNaturalist that is like a future file, or an escrow account. We don't know if it's going to be needed, but there's absolutely no harm in a picture of it.

[00:12:50] Griff Griffith: This takes us back to BioBlitzes. with the power of computer vision, nearly anyone can start contributing to community science, perhaps helping to decipher how to identify that fly.

[00:12:59] Or discovering an insect that was thought to be long gone, or be the first to discover a new invasive species in your area.

[00:13:05] Michael Hawk: So, yes, I've had a number of discoveries in my backyard and on bioblitzes. When you actively look, and as you start to build and develop that mental acuity or the mental search image, you start to find more and more. It really builds on itself. And these little excursions to my yard are me time, time to be focused and, in the moment. 

[00:13:25] And it's great fun when you submit something to I naturalist, not quite sure what it is. And then some expert or enthusiast replies back with a comment like this hasn't been recorded since 1918, or it's never been photographed before. I mean, I'm no entomologist, but I'm proud that I've been able to contribute to our collective knowledge in this way. And even with the regular sightings, by documenting those, I've started to learn the ebbs and flows of nature. Some years are great years for a certain type of hover fly that pollinates my salvia other years are great for those Hawk moths that look a little bit like hummingbirds. Why is that? Are other people seeing the same things? 

[00:14:00] Is this a trend?

[00:14:01] Griff Griffith: listen, if Michael, who's running, jumpstart nature and caring for his family can make discoveries while in a way. Practicing mindfulness. So can you. being present in that moment of sharing space with feathered, scaled, furred, or flowering friend has far reaching benefits. The first step is installing the iNaturalist app. And it's free.

[00:14:20] And Cat Chang explains that there are additional upsides. 

[00:14:24] Cat Chang: When people are really curious about the organisms that they're looking at, I will suggest iNaturalist and not just because they might get the identification back, but I mentioned that, Their observation then is there for scientists and researchers to be able to access, it's an open data platform that's different than some of the other apps that will return identifications. those are commercial endeavors and they're, they're not necessarily allowing for this open source, sort of network to be in place for other people to enjoy and connect.

[00:14:58] Griff Griffith: Joseph suggests that you can get started near your home, in your yard or neighborhood park, and as great as the app is, the website is even better.

[00:15:07] Joseph Montes de Oca: If you're interested in using iNaturalist and you kind of want to look around your, your home get onto the website. Zoom into your neighborhood and see what people are seeing around you. You know, maybe make a goal out of finding a few of these most Commonly observed organisms. And also look closely at whatever you're trying to find, you know, you can kind of go on a little bug safari. So maybe you've planted some native plants.

[00:15:30] , look on each leaf, you know, try to find different species, you may find scale insects, you may find aphids, you may find caterpillars, but you won't find those things unless you're looking very closely and taking your time. And I think that that's one of the biggest tips I would give someone is to look closely and and see what else other people are observing around you.

[00:15:50] Griff Griffith: and right now is an excellent time to try out iNaturalist because an annual global event called the City Nature Challenge kicks off on April 26th. 

[00:15:59] The City Nature Challenge is like a multi day Bioblitz, with local coordinators around the globe organizing events that you can attend. They might be at your local state or city park, or at an Arboretum. Despite the name City Nature Challenge, the event is not limited to cities. The name comes from the origin of the event, a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[00:16:19] But it has expanded into a massive global event. It's an incredible opportunity to learn about your local environment and meet some like minded nature enthusiasts in your area. You can find participating cities and regions on CityNatureChallenge. org and follow the links to find out how you can participate in your area.

[00:16:36] Griff Griffith: and sit back and enjoy seeing what others report. Event coordinators organize observations into projects. You'll be amazed at what others find and perhaps inspired to go out and find some of those things too. If the whole idea of using the app seems overwhelming, we've created two quick and easy tutorial videos on our Jumpstart Nature YouTube channel. One for using your phone and the other showing you how to use the iNaturalist website.

[00:16:59] iNaturalist also has several excellent and more detailed tutorials at their site. inaturalist.org/help. Of course, we'll make it easy for you and include these links in the show notes.

[00:17:09] Joseph Montes de Oca: I would say it really has been a life changing experience. Just going out and discovering things that maybe have been around you your whole life.

[00:17:18] And you just haven't appreciated it and you haven't noticed it before. And being able to put a name on it. I mean, that's that in itself is kind of a life changing experience and having that ability to, tap into a community of people that are also passionate about nature, whether it's, you know, they're experts on spring tails or they're experts on conifers or whatever it may be

[00:17:40] It's just really great.

[00:17:41] Jennifer Rycenga: For me, it's been a really fun opportunity to reflect on how much iNaturalist has changed my life, opened up vistas of knowledge and new friendships,

[00:17:52] Cat Chang: my life is richer for the friends that I have made on it and, definitely for understanding the flora and the fauna  even more deeply than I thought I understood it when I started. And so I love that fact that there's so much more You might think you have a deep knowledge, but there's always more underneath

[00:18:13] Griff Griffith: so here's what you need to do. Install the iNaturalist app today, then walk outside. Find a tree, an ant, or even a weed growing in the sidewalk crack, whatever, just to make sure it's not something that you or your neighbor planted. Snap a picture, crop it so the subject is clear and submit the observation. There's no better time to get started.

[00:18:32] And as you'll hear in our next episode, cicadas and biodiversity are counting on you to contribute.

[00:18:37] Matt Kasson: I encourage anyone who is into observing nature to start an iNaturalist account. iNaturalist is a, is a wonderful community science platform where whether you're interested in birds, spiders, plants, cicada butt fungi, you know, you name it.

[00:18:55] Griff Griffith: Cicada butt fungi You'll just have to subscribe to jumpstart nature. So you don't miss out on that story. So get outside, submit your first iNaturalist observation and start your own life changing journey.

[00:19:06] keep up to date with JumpStart Nature on social media. We're @jumpstartnature on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast and share it with three friends. One more thing. If you want to hear more about the city nature challenge, our companion podcast, nature's archive has a full length interview with Alison Young.

[00:19:26] One of the co founders of the city nature challenge. Lastly, jumpstartnature.com/podcast has a transcript of today's episodes . As well as links to everything we referenced. Check it out and see you next time.

[00:19:38]

[00:19:38] Michael Hawk: Special thanks to Joseph Montes de Oca, Jennifer Rycenga and Cat Chang. Also thank you to Keith Wandry for letting me record some of his experience at a recent BioBlitz that was organized by BioBlitz club and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. 

[00:19:53] Jumpstart Nature was created, written and produced by me, Michael Hawk, our host and co-writer is Griff Griffith. The song's Imagefilm033 by Sascha Ende and Mystical Autumn by MusicLfiles were used in the production with permission via creative commons licenses. This music is available from filmmusic.io and full license information is in the show notes. 

[00:20:13] At jumpstartnature.com/podcast. Thanks for listening.