I need to set up a new geographical 'area' for observations in a specific woodland - how do I do that please?

[Buzz007]

I need to set up a new geographical area for observations in a specific woodland - how do I do that please? I am involved in our local environmental group that manages this woodland and we want to set up a project called ‘Worthington Woods’ that is in Wedmore Somerset, but not for it to include the whole village of Wedmore which already exists within your system, Thank you
PS I have started to create the group - you might stumble across it if you search Worthington Woods.

[fffffffff]

You need to create a place. It’s in “More>Places”, you need a kml file for that. https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/managing-projects

[nonbinary-naturalist]

@Buzz007 I use Google Earth to set up the boundary!

Open Google Earth, and find wherever you want to have the area.

A side menue should have icons like this, you want to click on the one that says “projects”.

Then click “create” which should open a little dropdown menue, and you can then click “create KML file”

Then you click the “create new feature” button, which will create a drop down menu, which you’ll select “draw shape or line” from

This will let you select a point on the map to be the starting place for your boundary for the area!

You can then draw whatever shape you need to encompass the area you want, then when it’s all connected, go over to the side menue, and at the top of the menue for the project, there will be a trashcan icon and three dots. Click on the three dots, and it should give you the option to export as a KML file.

You’ll just save that to your computer, then go to the iNaturalist home page, click on the “more” button on the top row of options, and click places.

Below the map is the option to “Add a new place” Click on that.

This will open the page where you can upload the KML file you created, and name your new location.

You can then create a project for it so it’s easy to keep track of what’s found in the location. For that you click “Community” at the top of the iNaturalist page, then “Projects”, then "start a new project’. I usually just do a collection project.

When you scrolls down to what should be included in the project, you’ll have the option to include a place. All you have to do is type in the name of the place you just created, and it should pop up automatically.

It can take some time for observations within the area/project to load if there’s already a bunch of them, so just be patient (unlike me, lol). The project might initially appear empty, but it will load the observations in when it’s done collecting them all. I thought I messed something up the first time I did this, but nope, I just needed to wait an hour or two.

Hope this helps :)

[mamestraconfigurata]

Nice guide!
Does it know if it’s worth while setting up a project that would likely include only me, or perhaps one or two other folks. I have though about it for the area I go through daily along the Red River in Winnipeg, but I know of no other people who go there and who make iNat observations. My observations tend to focus on birds and insects, but I have no clue who might also contribute. Or even how to search for them.
EDIT I changed ‘you’ to ‘it’. I looked at your profile and I believe that is the nomenclature you prefer. Please advise me if I have this wrong.

[nonbinary-naturalist]

I’d say it’s worth it, because you never know who’ll join iNaturalist nearby in the future, and their observations will also automatically be added, and they’ll be able to look back and see your observations too! :) You could also use the project as a way to encourage people to join iNaturalist, if you see other people near the woods who don’t use it, if they find out there’s a project to keep track of what’s there, they might join just to help and learn!

[mamestraconfigurata]

Thanks!

[nonbinary-naturalist]

No problem! :)

As for my pronouns, it’s okay to call me “you” when you’re asking a question like “do you think”, you’d just “it” in place of something like he, she, or they.

So for example, if you wanted to say “they made a guide on how to create a place for iNaturalist”, you’d say “it made a guide” instead :)

Any place you’d say he/him/his, she/her/hers, or they/them/their to refer to me, you just replace it with “it”, or “its” or “itself”, but other than that, the rest of the sentence would stay the same.

Thank you for being nice! :)

[sunguramy]

I made a project for an area of land i’m working on, it has like two observers so similarly small, but it is still handy to see everything in one place sorted out from all my other observations. I put off doing it, and wish I hadn’t.

[jdjohnson]

One thing to keep in mind for places like smaller parks and nature reserves is that if the uncertainty area, whether it’s the GPS accuracy circle or the bigger rectangle for an obscured observation, falls outside of the place boundary, the observation won’t be included in the place checklist or any projects based on that place. The reason for this is that people can’t make smaller and smaller places to find the true location of an obscured observation.
With Collector projects, you can’t manually add observations to them so rare species or those obscured for other reasons may never show up on your place or project list.

[caththalictroides]

Yes - I intentionally made the project boundary of a local nature preserve larger than the actual boundary, so that observations near the edges would be ‘captured.’