Hello iNaturalist Community, I am a botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, currently working on a checklist of the flora of the high Andes of Peru, defined here as areas above 4,500 m elevation. I am hoping to create and curate an iNaturalist project called “High Andean Flora of Peru”, wh…

Hello all, here is a final update on this thread. The project is live! It can be found here: Flora of High Andean Peru . I reached out to @marceloamores , who has made similar projects using complex geometry for the Páramos Ecuador project. He walked me through his workflow in Google Earth Engine an…

In order to contribute a useful observation, there has to be geolocation x and y information. To the best of my information if x and y are available why should z (altitude) not be? Then you can filter your observations by altitude, and as I understood your request, that is what you require.

The interplay of observational accuracy and elevational gradients reduces the utility of your assumption on elevations. We can all think of examples–especially in the Andean region–where an x-y difference of just a hundred meters or so could make a difference in hundreds or thousands of meters of e…

Tony, could you comment on @rupertclaytons’ suggestion for the possibility of creating a set of, say, 10 or 20 small polygons, each representing a localized collection project, then creating an umbrella project (or not) for the amalgamation of those?

[image] magsylombard: This area is approximately 80,000 km², well within the size limit for new places. However, likely due to the high resolution of the polygon I generated, the KML file I attempted to upload is 55 MB Based on the size of you KML file, I am imagining your multi-polygon has a…

Definitely what I would do: download (precisely georeferenced) iNat observations, then automatically select only the points falling within the bounds of the 4500m+ polygons.

Splitting up the kml is relatively straight forward and can even be done manually with a text editor. Drop me a line in case you need help with this.

[image] GeolTel: Definitely what I would do: download (precisely georeferenced) iNat observations, then automatically select only the points falling within the bounds of the 4500m+ polygons. But… @magsylombard is looking to create a place-based project to “build enthusiasm and serve as a hub …

[image] magsylombard: I would love to be able to use iNaturalist data in my research! sounds (to me) like a very different endeavour, one that is best dealt with at the researcher -not platform- level. If it’s a matter of organizing social interactions between enthusiastic taxonomists, a foru…

Does the place really need to be so precise? It seems to me that for your purposes it would not be the end of the world if a few patches of land that are, say, 4,450 m above sea level made it into the place, especially given standard error in location pins on iNat (which I think will be present even…

Creating a project using a complex elevation polygon

General

tiwane February 5, 2026, 10:58pm 21

It should be OK as long as it’s within the restrictions we have for new places (area, number of observations, file size). Note that a user can only add three new places a day.

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Creating a project using a complex elevation polygon

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