I am working on a spatial research project. I created a project for the county I want to export the data from. I created an outline of the county by making it a place. I correctly selected the county as the included place for the project. So theoretically my exported data should only be data collected in that county. However, that isn’t the case. I get data collected in other counties. Even on the project map, it shows data collected from outside the county. I am using ArcMap to import the data from iNat. I am using the correct projections for XY coordinates and all. I am fairly certain the issue isn’t within ArcMap but the export of the data within the project. I will include a link to my project if that is helpful. Any help would be appreciated.
Hi @lefaivre, welcome to the iNaturalist Forum. The locations outside of the county that you are seeing on the map and in the data are the “obscured”, randomized localities. Observations can be obscured manually by the observer or in cases where the species is set to automatically obscure (usually because it’s sensitive to things like overharvesting). More info here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#geoprivacy
Check your exported data for items in the columns “geoprivacy” and “taxon_geoprivacy” that say “obscured” to exclude those datapoints, if desired.
Also, here’s a search that shows all observations in that county (not necessary to create a project):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=1122
And one that excludes obscured observations:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=1122&taxon_geoprivacy=open&geoprivacy=open
and even more search options at https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki/63
Thank you so much!