How are Observations selected to be shown in a Project or search WRT physical location?

[pisum]

@pisum

it’s based on the lat / long coordinates + the positional accuracy value that gets entered with the observation.

this is your place:

below is one of that user’s observations from the set of observations in your second link above. they all have the exact same coordinates, and most have positional accuracy value of 196m. (one has an even larger acc value of 732m.) that accuracy value is saying that the observation theoretically could have occurred anywhere within 196m of the point indicated by the coordinates. when you look at the map on the detail page for this observation, you see a pin which reflects the lat/long of the observation, plus a big circle around the pin, which reflects the positional accuracy.

below, i’ve overlaid the big circle on top of your place polygon, and you can see the circle exceeds the boundaries of the place, which means that it will not be found if you search for observations in that place/project.

if you want that user’s observations to be included in your project, you will need to either expand the boundaries of your place or ask the user to change the positional accuracy of those observations so that the whole circle will fall inside the boundaries of your place.

@moonlittrails

I went to Explore>Location=“Santa Clara County, CA, USA”, Filters>selected Insects and Arachnids, changed Place to “Monte Bello Open Space Preserve, CA, US” and updated, and it went to someplace in the South Pacific ocean on the map. But “Monte Bello Open Space Preserve parking lot, CA, US” goes to the correct place and shows my shape.

this is actually a common point of confusion. here’s something i wrote in another thread that will apply here (you can read the rest of that thread if you’re interested in more details):

@pisum

there are actually 2 ways to filter for locations on the Explore page. the way i usually do it is to click on filters > more filters, and then input a place. that is a little more reliable, in my opinion, than using the location box next to the species box.