I noticed another issue with locations added automatically via a location tag of a photo, if the GPS accuracy is 200m, then it creates a circle 100m in diameter (not actually figures, I’m just making an example), but you observation is not necessarily dead center of that circle, it’s just somewhere in the circle, so if you later go and change that GPS accuracy on the iNat site to say 5m, it shrinks the circle to say only 2.5m, but not to where your observation was made, rather to the center of the circle, giving completely incorrect location data, and if the initial GPS accuracy is very low (like a few thousand meters and you adjust it on the site to 5 or 10m, it adds your observations to the nearest pinned location (maybe not your pinned location, but the nearest one on the database), so I have a very forest like location I enjoy visiting, but it’s in sort of an hole and obviously has dense tree cover so the GPS data is usually very low, but I’ve noticed my observations from there are 80% of the time grouped up nearby at a Nature Reserve that is now private property but it has had observations made on it when it was still a public entity (I personally have never made any observations there) yet my observations get grouped up there, same has happened with a nearby golf course, I observe on the ridge and kloofs just behind the golf course yet some observations end up on the greens of the golf course (usually tree observations from a more densely vegetated area of the ridges behind it, which has resulted in some of my observations being marked ‘not wild’ and it always happens after I’ve set the GPS accuracy on iNat
I moved this post from the previous thread because it brought up a different question. I titled it as best as I could but feel free to edit.
As a followup to this question, I’m not sure why one would decrease the accuracy value to 5 or 10m, if the device accuracy was much higher than that. If you are manually adjusting the accuracy down, because you know the exact location, you would need to ensure that the location pin is in the exact place that corresponds to your confidence in reducing the accuracy (precision) value to represent that. If the location actually isn’t at the center of the circle, then the accuracy shouldn’t be manually decreased.
It’s possible that a land feature is visible on satellite imagery that allows reduction of the range down significantly.
Something like a pond, or rock outcrop could allow that.
When GPS data is poor, I frequently take pictures of surrounding landmarks that should show up on satellite imagery.
Then I’ll shrink the observation’s circle down to fit between these landmarks.
Absolutely, I do this as well. But I then move the point to the correct location, so that the adjust accuracy value is correct for the point. Just adjusting the accuracy downwards alone shouldn’t be done.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.