Is there a way to gather pictures of different kinds of biota in one group? E.g. If someone would like to know which flower, tree, mammal or bird lives more or less exactly in one place: Is there a way to provide each of the photos of the thought biota (flower, tree, mammal/bird) with a code or tag so that others can look specifically for this tag and thereby can retrieve the whole group of pictures, taken at this one place? I realize that you’re probabely able to search a place by its coordinates (or directly on the map). My question is, if in addition to that I would like to be able to connect selected pictures of different biota to each other, in such a way that other inaturalists can search this database for that specific group: How would I do this?
Of course you can add a tag or observation field or make a traditional project, you can see it all on the observation page.
Yes, I saw that I could do all of this. But as far as I understand, a general tag doesn’t necessarily connect two specific pictures to each other. I’m not sure if an observation field would help to do so, either? A “traditional project” is on a different and more general level, I guess? - If this is to become part of a project, I would like people to be able to search for example for a picture of one species and then find - together with it - some kind of “link” that leads them to specific pictures of plants or other species that were taken in exactly the same place.
A tag connects them, you use your specific tag and it will show only observations with it, using observations fields as “similar observation set” or any custom field you can create yourself do the same. But if you wish to automatically see them when you open observation page – there’s no way to do that, only if you click on whatever you add to them. You also can add links to observations in the description, people often do that.
The following is not meant as a direct answer to your @Spyr question, but to express support for the importance of linking different observations to a context (bounded by some temporal and spatial constraints). The existing capabilities in iNaturalist tags, observation field, projects, are, I guess, what we have right now, and we’ll have to utilize those capabilities as best as we can.
In the longer run, though, I look forward to the day when we can use “semantic technologies” to enable iNaturalist observers to document, in a machine-readable manner, that “this insect in this observation record” –(was observed on)–> “this plant in this observation record”. Or, “this avian raptor in this record” –(was observed attacking)–> “this mammal in this record”. It would really be cool to have a visual interface that allows one to link such observations into a (mathematical) graph.
These graphs can then be used by scientists to select appropriate data for analyses. There are these things called “graph databases” that offer such capabilities like visualizing all cascading connections (limited to some “distance”) of “related” flora/fauna (say within the same genus) combinations for that geographical location for some given time period.
But for every pipe-dream like this, there’s a cost to technology development, but perhaps somebody will be motivated enough to experiment!
Thank you for your help! I am beginning to understand how this works.
Thank you for interesting answer and support. Now that I begin to understand how they work, I will make use of the tags, observation fields and projects in order to learn more about the contexts! I’m fascinated by the idea of working together with other nature lovers via this website and its tools, now and in future.
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