I’m new to iNaturalist so please excuse me if I’ve overlooked the answer to this question, though I’ve searched. I would like to follow people in my geographical region. This would help me immensely, affording me a practical way of seeing who and what is going on around me. Is there a way to find other iNaturalist users in my area? Ideally, I would like to sort by state or region and get a listing of iNaturalist users in that area, including a link to their profile and the ability to follow them.
Thanks for your help in advance. It’s much appreciated.
Doug
Welcome to iNat! I think the easiest way to approach this is to use the Explore function on the website, enter your area of choice under location (e.g. county, state), and check out the “observers” and “identifiers” tabs for those who are most active in those areas. You can click on their names to get to their profiles and follow them.
Hi Doug! Welcome to the iNaturalist community! @billhubick has put together a really good page on Maryland Biodiversity that includes field trips: https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/
Lots of those folks utilize iNaturalist in the field trips too, it seems.
The basic approach is to use the “Explore” tab on iNaturalist.org. Click on “explore,” and then in the “location” box put the name of the country, state, province, county, etc and hit return. (If you are interested in a taxon, such as mollusks, plants, amphibians, etc, put that in the “species” box before hitting return.) Once you get a return, click on “Observers” and you will see a list of the major observers in that location. Click on each name to see the person’s profile, and note those that seem to match your interests. If you “follow” them, you will be notified of new observations they make. By identifying these observations or commenting on them, you can begin to make a relationship with these people and it can go from there.
I’ve met many iNaturalists this way, some of whom turned into field friends. Good luck!
You can also follow a place. I think it’s only available on the website though. On your dashboard page, right side below “Forums”, there’s a section for “Subscriptions.” You can subscribe to a place, which lets you search for place names. You can also filter by taxon if you only want to see plants or insects for instance. That way you can see any new observations for your local county (or whichever area) no matter who posts them.
As a follow up to my previous question: My confusion stemmed from trying to do this from the app. As best I can determine the app isn’t going to allow me to find observers as the community below has suggested. It appears that it must be done from the web page.
Thanks to everyone who gave me a helping hand on this. Much appreciated!