I’d like to create a project restricted to my municipality. How can I create a KML file that contains all the boundaries for my municipality? It seems that when I search for my municipality, I see the boundaries but when I export the KML file, it doesn’t contain the data the boundary information that iNaturalist needs.
Where are you searching/exporting from?
I’ve tried using Google Maps and Google Earth (web and desktop version).
Here is an example from Google Earth web: https://earth.google.com/web/search/Clinton+Township,+NJ/@40.63390708,-74.85583137,143.79617024a,28255.23510671d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=Cn8aVRJPCiUweDg5YzM4YzhjMTgxMjcyZWY6MHhjM2JkNTQ2NzZiMjExMzVkGe6yX3e6UERAIR8AJ8qUt1LAKhRDbGludG9uIFRvd25zaGlwLCBOShgCIAEiJgokCeJxwedqW0RAEVDdzlHMRkRAGT7qmItdqFLAIcdzg78wxVLA
If it’s a municipality it could well be a Standard Place in iNaturalist already, and you may not need to create a KML. Have you tried searching here? https://www.inaturalist.org/places
I don’t see Clinton Township in iNat’s places already, so you’ll need to create it.
If I were doing it, I would pull it into QGIS with QuickOSM, but you could also use the web interface. For reference, this is Clinton Township in OSM.
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Here is a helpful tutorial.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/creating-a-place-for-your-us-city-using-census-bureau-geography-data/21927
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for administrative boundaries, you can often download official boundaries from government GIS open data portals. in the case of Clinton Township, NJ, you can get such boundaries from NJ’s state GIS portal. here’s the relevant dataset, filtered for the particular township: https://njogis-newjersey.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/a1b13541f0484415b06cf9c8969bfd6c_0/explore?filters=eyJNVU4iOlsiQ0xJTlRPTiBUV1AiXX0%3D.
you should be able to export KML from here with just a few clicks:
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Something to keep in mind is the size of your area. That’s only about 9km x 5km.
Observations where the accuracy circle extends outside the border, or ones of species that are of a status other than Least Concern and are auto-obscured as a result may not show up in the ‘species observed’ table, leading to inaccurate results.
Basically, the smaller the area the less useful and accurate the results will be, at least for collection projects.
This was the easiest way of doing it. Thanks!
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