i thought it would be interesting to see where the top 10 observers for the 2021 CNC were observing. Boulder is located at about 40 deg latitude. The top observer was in New York, also around 40 deg. Two of the other top 10 were also observing around 40 deg. Four of the top 10 were located around 55 deg. None of the top 10 were anywhere near California. Even if looking at just the top 10 in the US, none were in California.
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Nice analysis and reality check.
Although I imagine a number of northern latitude people still stayed home so early in their spring. Perhaps, potentially top observers in the middle latitudes were distracted by other activities due to the nice weather.
Thank you for analyzing that. 
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possible to do this for top 10 observers by species instead of raw observations?
Moved this from another topic in #city-nature-challenge because with City Nature Challenge now over, that category is about to go into its annual hibernation and this might be an interesting way to discuss CNC data and analyses.
@pisum’s original post here was in response to a discussion about holding the CNC at other times of year to be more inclusive of places where the weather isn’t so great in April. I just want to reiterate that the CNC is not organized by iNaturalist but by a third party, so please make suggestions of CNC dates at citynaturechallenge.org. I’ll also note there’s a Great Southern Bioblitz (also organized by a third party) that holds an event during the southern hemisphere’s spring (or thereabouts).
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indirectly, you can map the center of gravity for observations by observers with the most species. in this case, these top 10 observers were generally observing in warmer places (2 in Houston, 2 in Miami, 2 in Taiwan).
i think the top observers based on species will probably be tilted to places with large land area (more diversity in habitats), lots plants in bloom and birds, and lots of identifiers, since that’s the easiest path to get to observations at the species level. so the playing field there is only somewhat influenced by climate, i think.
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It might be a bit off-topic saying this here, but this wasn’t the only topic within #city-nature-challenge analysing the results - could that be moved to general? It was on the subject of calculating people who made the only observation of a given species within a given bioblitz, and isn’t exclusively something that can be used for CNC.
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Plus most of northern towns/cities are not participating at all, so users have little push to go out just to be in the world group (and nowhere years before). Interesting that all mentioned participants are not closer to ecuator while it would be an ideal place for observations.
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