Creating Region for Northeastern North America?

Hello all,

I was hoping to find a region that ties into the Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America. All the regions on iNat related to the NE portion of North America are either too small or too large.

If there’s a region that covers Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota to the west with a line from the north edge of Minnesota to New Brunswick down the coast to the south edge which includes Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri this would be great.

If not is there a way to request this? I tried creating it but I found out there are restrictions creating larger regions.

Thanks in advance.

Ben

Why do you want it? This is probably the place to ask, although I haven’t seen many places accepted.
This place exists although it doesn’t match exactly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/northeastern-united-states-and-canada
For a project or search filter you can also add smaller regions individually to cover the entire area, like how this project has done: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/caterpillars-of-eastern-north-america

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The one you pointed out covers too much of Canada and doesn’t include all the states in the Northeasten United States. If it’s possible to create this would be great. If creating new regions is out of the question this would be good to know.

This seems like a very useful natural boundary for the Northeastern U.S. Not sure what went into the decision for the current Northeastern United States which seems like an overly narrow definition: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/northeastern-united-states

Thanks.

Hi Ben,

As far as I know, anyone on iNaturalist can designate new regions.

You can do it here: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/new

I’ve made hundreds for parks & universities, myself.

Please let me know if that helps.
Chris

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No, there are restrictions.

  • firstly you have to have entered a certain number of observations.
  • regular users are restricted to locations whose kml is less than 1mb in size
  • curators may create with a kml of up to 5mb
  • no user outside the staff may create a location larger than approx. 500,000 km2 which certainly applies here.
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Ah, I see. Thank you @cmcheatle

@nycbirder can you describe what you want to do with the place? If you want to make a collection project to aggregate observations of interest, can you combine multiple existing places to acheive the same outcome?

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@carrieseltzer Thanks for the reply. I’m looking to have access to a region that is useful to people interested in the NE United States flora and fauna. Being able to choose one place that is consistent for all would be ideal.

The current place called ‘Northeastern United States’ covers an area that matches the U.S. Census Bureau definition. The needs for people interested in the wildlife of the NE U.S. may differ from the USCB definition.

I’ve created an URL with the 22 states in the U.S. plus New Brunswick. This excludes the southern portions of Ontario & Quebec. Here are all the moths reported for the Northeastern U.S. in iNat. The # of species is currently at 3,189:

Moths of Northeastern U.S. (iNaturalist - Map View)

Thanks again and all the best.

Ben

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The place “Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide Range” seems to be the existing place closest to what you want.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=81457&taxon_id=47157&without_taxon_id=47224

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Nice find @JeremyHussell! This comes close to what is shown in Peterson’s Moths of NE US. I see that it’s basically a box.

How did you find this? From experience or is there a way to do this by highlighting an area to see what places exist there?

Thanks!

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When you’re viewing an observation, such as https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10605800, just under the map, on the right, there’s a button labelled “Details” which opens a list of all the “Community Curated” places which contain the observation, sorted from smallest to largest.

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I never thought to click on ‘Details’. Works as advertised! Thanks again.

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