With this connection I can see that we speak with officials in Sweden and let them know that on the information page they also can have links to observations registered in iNaturalists or latest picture on social media like Instagram… as they also have place ids in Wikidata…
.e.g.
Abisko National Park
** Wikidata Q953092
*** WD property P3896Geojson or as a map
*** WD property P4173 Instagram location 224815014
*** WD property P7471 iNaturalist place id xxxxx
a couple of thoughts first: it’s probably best to create a place in iNaturalist only if someone is actually going to use it and/or manage it, not simply because a geoJSON file exists. because iNaturalist places are generally editable only by the creator of the place (unless admin or curator), it might be useful to have, say, a Swedish parks authority create these places in iNaturalist so that they can manage them later, if needed.
that said, it’s not difficult to use a geoJSON to create an iNaturalist place. first, you need something that can convert geoJSON to KML. (i would typically use something like QGIS, since it’s free, relatively well-documented, and can be used for other GIS tasks.) use your conversion tool to turn the geoJSON to KML. then create your place in iNaturalist using the KML file. that’s it.
one more note: Abisko National Park has already been created in iNaturalist as 120912, and the P7471 record in Wikidata has been created.
oh… one more thing: make sure the resulting KML has just one feature in it. for example, if your source geoJSON file has multiple parks in it, and you want to load each park as its own place, you need to chop it up and create a separate KML for each park. (QGIS can handle that kind of task.)
Thanks for the feedback… I am a rather newbie using iNaturalist what do you mean by manage them? I think they are also available in kml if that makes it easier
Those geojson are Open Data from the Swedish Environmental protection agency web (swedish “Naturvårdsverket”) and those areas are decided by regulations so they are very stable as stable as Sweden will be ;-)
The map contains links to the regulation deciding them etc…
As we have all this data in Wikidata and in sv:Wikipedia we have articles I feel it will be easy for local web sites to link Wikipedia and also iNaturalist so people planning to visit those areas understand latest flowers/birds found in the natural reserve…
creating new Places is very taxing on the iNaturalist servers, so it’s best not to create a Place that won’t be used. And ideally the user who created them should remain active on the site, because only the creator of a Place, and Curators, can edit or delete that Place.
i mean that it’s helpful to have someone actually keeping tabs on places that they create. each place created has an impact – large or small – on the overall performance of the entire system. so the worst thing is to create a place that is never used by anyone. but it could be just as bad if you create a place that is used but then, say, the name of the place changes (which happens even with national parks), and then instead of someone looking after the place changing the name of the original place, someone else comes along and creates a second place with a different name.
Hi, a noob here myself, with a request. If you do have the means, would you please consider adding the nature reserves Garnudden (Salem), Vinterskogen (Botkyrka) and Rågsved (Stockholm)? I often frequent them, and it would be neat to keep tabs of what is seen there, but I don’t know how to create places myself.
so suppose you want to add Garnudden. click on the appropriate link above, and then save the results as a .json file on your machine (ex. “Gardnudden.json”). i’m going to use QGIS to convert geoJSON to KML. so download and install that from https://www.qgis.org/, if you don’t already have it. (or else use another converter, and skip past my instructions here about converting in QGIS.)
open up QGIS, and go to Layer > Add Layer > Add Vector Layer… in the pop-up window, go to the Source > Vector Dataset(s) box, and select the geoJSON file that you saved earlier. then click the Add button in the bottom-right of the pop-up window, and then close the pop-up window.
in your QGIS application, look in the bottom-left corner of the screen, and you should see a Layers pane with a layer corresponding to the vector layer you just added. right click on on that layer record, and select Export > Save Features As…
in the pop-up window, select KML as your format, and use the file selector to pick a file name (making sure you include the full path of where you want to save the file). click ok. you should now have your KML file.
you should be able to open up your KML with a text editor like Notepad to view the contents. mine looks like this:
now go to the Place screen in iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/places. before you create any place, first search for it to see if it already exists. if not, click on the button or link to Add a New Place.
from there, give the place a name (ex. “Garnudden”), an optional parent place (ex. “Salem” or “Sweden”), and then select the KML file you created earlier. i tend to leave the place type undefined, or you could select something like “Open Space”. then click save place. (more information on creating places is available if you go here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started, and then click on the Places tab.)
Thanks for the feedback… and I agree maintaining the data is the big challenge therefore I think we should try to do this in a structured way and I think if iNaturalist connects to more communities like Wikidata errors will be found faster
same map but WDPA World Database on Protected Areas --> of > 39000 just 67 was connected with iNaturalist so I feel it is a potential but I guess best is if this is done in a structured way and also that iNaturalist starts point back on Wikidata / World Database on Protected Areas and in the Swedish case also the official source for the data (Swedish Environmental protection agency has property P3613 in Wikidata --> map and as you saw they have data about the area so that I guess is a good match… the challenge I start seeing in Wikidata is that we have > 4000 external identifiers (same query but just properties someone think is related to taxons) and we need better communication with organisations like the Swedish Environmental protection agency
easy way to report errors in data or ask question
get helpdesk id
best is if they have a public backlog (compare Wikidata)
I have worked with international money transactions and then we had a fast easy way of communicate if Bank of America didnt receive 100 million $ … maybe a name change on a protected area is not so urgent for most people but I guess you need an infrastructure and a mentality that I miss today when Wikidata connect external identifiers… I did a draft of middle layer between Wikidata and the datasource to make needed communication easier and also having a database for changing differences in data… see T251225#6105481
Update: had an email conversation today with "Swedish Environmental Protection Agency “Naturvårdsverket” and they will open a web called data for developers so all input what we would like to see is welcome…
i don’t disagree with your idea – in a world with unlimited resources. but i just don’t see a situation where there’s going to be a single de facto / preferred repository for GIS data any time soon, and in the absence of that, i’m guessing the cost / benefit balance for developing and supporting an interface to get data from Wikidata into iNaturalist and then back to Wikidata weighs much more heavily on the costs side.
take Goukamma Nature Reserve, your first example of potential duplicates in iNaturalist. it’s neat that there’s a way in Wikidata to find potential duplicates in iNaturalist, but you might be able to do something similar in iNaturalist. and if you look in Wikidata, there is not a geoJSON for that reserve. so Wikidata couldn’t serve as a source for geography in that case.
if you just wanted to add iNaturalst Place ID records to Wikidata en masse, i think that might be something that anyone with some coding skills could do…
That would be magic and I feel Wikidata has always had this problem that we cant trust the data providers that they have skills/tools/change process/ a prioritize backlog so we easier can plan…
As you said Open Data needs skill and resources and understanding… we can see over in Wikidata land that a few people do magic but its not for everyone doing everything… adding external identifiers is a step 1 and it looks like for iNaturalist taxon ID Wikidata has some added value… and today we have a very good integration between iNaturalist and Wikidata, listen to Wikipedia Weekly how Wikidata use iNaturalist for finding CC-0 pictures for species that dont have pictures in WIkipedia articles etc…
my feeling
we need to agree about direction… is nature reserves something wanted in iNaturalist…
then start with the low hanging fruits maybe Sweden is one we have at least a first dialogue in Sweden with the people owning the data and they distribute it with an Open license… I pray that this a low hanging fruit…
My guess we need also some support from the iNaturalist dev team
add some more external identifiers to iNaturalist like
Wikidata ID
maybe Swedish Environment id and mark them as the source
best would be to find a lifecycle management that we easy can check when they change or delete a nature reservation… as said earlier I see all the time the problem when Wikidata tries to connect with external providers
Nice @jensu I did a video of what you did in Swedish and shared it with Södertäljen municipal and a person at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
As the place name is Garnuddens naturreservat, ST, SE i guess it tries to find the article doing text search instead of using Wikidata and iNaturalist place location
Correct would be to ask Wikipedia for the english article corresponding to the iNaturalist place id 152114 and as the Wikidata property is Property:P7471 then this hub tool can help
as far as I can tell, the link to Wikipedia is based on a “text search”, but it’s based on the display name of the place, rather than the name of the place. it’s possible that adding a record for “Garnuddens naturreservat” in English Wikipedia and redirecting it to the English “Garnudden Nature Reserve” article might establish the link in iNaturalist when viewed in English, with the caveat that there may be quirks like what’s noted here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wikipedia-content-not-recognized-by-inat-place/9997.
if I follow the link for " There is no Wikipedia page matching Garnuddens naturreservat Would you like to start one ?"
it works… and the correct page is displayed…
Best implementation is to ask Wikidata for the language version of the article… either by using the placeid and hope that Wikidata is updated with it or using the Wikidata Qnumber
you can also use the syntax Special:GoToLinkedPage
before you conclude that this does not create a link in iNaturalist when viewed in English, remember to look at the thread i noted above:
(the gist of this is that if the Wikipedia page does not already exist before you try to view the link in iNaturalist the first time, then you may have to wait a period of time before iNaturalist will recognize any changes you’ve made on the Wikipedia side.)
(i don’t know why the iNat folks designed the page so that it waits so long to update Wikipedia content, but if anyone wants to reduce that lag, maybe they can start the process with a feature request…)
