If I’m doing multiday hikes then I don’t want to flatten my batteries by taking photos using my Phone. My camera is for photography it has no GPS. I tend to take photographs of my phone that shows the GPS coordinates perhaps every 500m or 1km. My camera is designed for photography so it takes better photographs.
In a 300,000+ hectare National Park why is photographing a tree using a GPS radius of 200metres a big deal? I don’t understand how this reduces quality of research? Especially when so many are iNat 1st
i’m not saying doing it when you don’t have another reasonable option is a bad idea, i’ve done that too. I am just saying that doing it on purpose when there’s also an obscuring option, frequently, seems like a bad idea.
In terms of the research, it doesn’t reduce the quality per se, it just makes certain kinds of research undoable. And i would think that would matter more, not less if it was an inat first.
I think the best method would be use location filters which would require voting for such features.
How would researching an obscured observation of 200m opposed to open radius make any difference to you? What exactly are you trying to research?
I can completely understand if it were to be a garden map or little reserves where some people may require a precise location of an orchid for whatever reasons, but obscured / open will have the same effect, you will not get a precise location.
The way I see it; If open GPS radius of 200m on the map is located on the road I know that it’s 400m along the track somewhere. If it’s obscured I don’t know where it is, did the observer go off track?
My Primary objectives is to enjoy nature, Physical & mental wellbeing. iNat comes secondary to the reasons I visit the National Parks. The workflow of pulling my phone out of my rucksack, draining the battery to take a photo of the GPS coordinates it’s just not practical for myself.
Precise spatial data is valuable for a lot of things. Increasingly in many parts of the world, we have very precise data layers on slope, aspect, elevation, soil type, geology, ecosystem type, etc. In those cases, we can use precise observations to model a connection between species and those features. For instance we could use the precise-location Red Oak observations in Vermont to run modeling on what slope and aspect it prefers, soil type, etc, which is really neat and helpful for understanding that species. Also, I use iNat as one of many sources of data when mapping wetlands, which is a pretty precise endeavor, and something with 100m+ uncertainty I am probably not going to use. And if the data is precise but obscured, some people might be willing to share the data with me whereas if it’s intentionally mapped coarsely, that location is lost.
There is no requirement to map to any spatial accuracy here, but intentionally not mapping to where something in DOES lead to loss in data quality. It’s not a big deal, and I’ve done it too, to be honest (usually if i did i would also obscure though, anyway), but i don’t think it’s a great practice to do on a regular basis.
In short, if you want to map imprecisely, that’s your call, but in response to
i was trying to explain that, yes it does reduce the value of the data.
it might not be that difficult to get that data, if someone really wanted to study this. If there is, say, a specific tree in a well-known location, we can compare observations of the tree vs the actual location to see what kind of people and devices get the best locations. it might even be possible to look at an individual’s observations just before and after to see if movement had any effect on the recorded location.
if you’re planning to lead a hike like that, maybe you can get a really good <1m GPS device (or find someone else who has one) and compare those locations vs the locations from everyone else on the hike. or if there’s an identifiable tree or something at a well-defined spot like a street corner, you could get the same kind of data without a really good GPS device. (just make sure you remember to record how each person is recording their GPS data.)
that might make for a really interesting science project if you know of a kid who still needs to do a science project this year.
Surveying is completely different from organisms such as plants, they love spreading. Although I see very little merit in overlaying exact locations of plants, some people may not. Perhaps the gemination of seedlings from an annual weed may be important to some.
I think so many factors come into play regarding accuracy of GPS coordinates these being population density (Human & organism). Type of Ecological Vegetation Class, Rarity of organism, Topography, Size of National Park or Flora Reserve, Man-made infrastructure such as roads etc.
I think my current workflow for iNat observation is decent. I don’t know of any person in the remote bushland whom would complain about the 200m accuracy of these species especially when another hundred of the same species are also found 2km away.
I would offer advice of increasing the accuracy of GPS coordinates in large wilderness areas by:
• Recording GPS locations at significant habitats such as a creek.
• Time factors should be considered, a person may have already documented the occurrences of those species in the area resulting in the person traveling greater distance between photography intervals. Look at the time frame on the photos as a guidance
• Record GPS location when occurring uncommon species.
What app do you use? And can you sync it up with your photos later, using time stamps maybe, or by dropping a point each time you take a photo?
I have very weak and infrequent internet, and have just gone back and belatedly added locations to ~150 observations, because I couldn’t even open the iNat location map when I was uploading the observations, due to the weak internet. Which, since most of my observations came from following barely-there tracks through jungle, meant just randomly dropping a point in the approximate area.
I have also been having situations where when I do use my GPS, I can stand there for 10 minutes without the accuracy dropping below 200m. Might just be the area I am in, though.
Battery drain is a big concern for me using GPS, but I would like to add better locations, so I would definitely check out your app.
Yes, if you are working in jungle or other heavy canopy cover, there is really no help for GPS equipment of any kind – the satellite signals just don’t penetrate most solid materials (other than apparently some kinds of glass in my experience).
To be honest i am kind of confused by all the issues people face. I use the iphone app and sometimes the android, and while the latter gets kind of off if you don’t give it a chance to zero in, i barely ever run into issues, and i’m often in the full canopy of Vermont’s forests which are not as dense as jungles but still quite lush in the summer. And i didn’t notice issues in Costa Rica either. My path of observations usually lines up fine and as i am in wetlands with specific features visible on air photos i always review the mapping and it’s pretty much always fine. It might be useful to hear what phones people are using as i suspect that may be part of the issue. Or any settings such as whether airplane mode and wifi are on or off, etc.
If you just leave a GPS tracking app on in the background while using your phone to take photos, your phone is constantly talking to the GPS satellites during that time. Since it’s constantly connected, it doesn’t take as long per photo/observation to hone in on your location as it does normally. In my experience, it’s about half a second to grab the GPS coordinates to <10 m precision while the tracking app is on, whereas it’s 3-5 seconds when I don’t have the tracking app on. When you’re doing a ton of observations, it makes a big difference. (I use GPS Essentials, but there are dozens of such apps for Android and iOS.)
It doesn’t require any additional syncing up later.
I am using an iPhone 5. I don’t take photos in the app, I take them with my phone camera and add them to iNat later. Partially because I am still figuring out how to take decent pictures of small or moving things, so I end up taking a ton of pictures and then sorting through them and deleting the detritus when I get home.
Leaving Location Services on drains my battery really fast, hence trying to add locations manually afterwards. Sounds like I should just invest in an external battery. :)
…ok, ok, I just had a play around with some of my IDs in iNat and my imprecise GPS was definitely user error. For organisms I found outside my room I would just click on the little arrow pointer that pins it to your current location, and then hit ok. Didn’t realize I had to zoom in all the way on the map afterwards to make the circle smaller. Thanks for your patience, everyone
Don’t know if my Android experience will have an equivalent for you in iOS (which I don’t use), but just in case…
Like @bouteloua says, leaving a GPS app running in the background can be a big help. And in addition, if it doesn’t hinder your workflow, put the phone in Airplane Mode, turn off Autosync in the iNat App, and manually sync later. That way it’s just the iNat app (and hopefully your phone’s camera too) talking to the GPS App, and draining a bit less battery. My GPS App of choice is called “GPS Status” – I’ve had it for several years with no complaints. Don’t know if there is an iOS version though…
Ah… yeah, that will do it. The camera mode doesn’t consistently take accurate GPS readings, so doing that can cause problems.You should try what @bouteloua posted above. And you need location services turned on when you are doing iNat or it wont work, turning it on and off leads to poor accuracy too. I just use the app straight out and bring exernal battery(s). But i also want to be able to take field notes in the observation as to what sort of ecosystem is there, and i can’t do that with the photo app. If you don’t care about that, the GPS tracker thing might work well for you.
Always turn off auto sync. It’s a tool to help the newest users but if you are going to do more than 1 observation every 10 minutes or go outside cell service at all, you need to turn it off for the app to work.
Does Google Maps in the background count as a GPS tracker? Does it help with using the app straight out too, or ust use more batteries? Maybe i should try it too.
It works with any app, the camera app or iNat itself.
Just opening Google Maps and closing it won’t do anything over time, but if you set the navigation on, e.g. to drive to a location, it will. But it’s using extra effort to calculate driving routes, so I imagine it would be better to just use a trail tracker app instead.
I’m using the app GPXLogger on android. Simple, no bells and whistles. A note about battery drain: normally when you have the phone’s location services on, it’s also trying to use the signal from surrounding cell towers to determine location, and if you’re in an area with inconsistent or weak cell service, the phone’s searching for service can eat a lot of battery (may also be messing with the GPS accuracy you’re seeing). That’s why I use a GPS app but put the phone in “airplane mode;” no more searching for cell service, it just relies on the gps chip which shouldn’t use much battery. I notice huge differences in battery consumption due to this, probably a 10x increase in rate of consumption with cell service on.
Syncing later using the photo timestamps is a pretty easy process that multiple free software programs can do for you. Here’s a tutorial thread with a lot of discussion on different software and hardware combinations and the processes of different users: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/geotagging-photos/66/22
My issue with automatic location is that a lot of photos I upload are from my yard. I’m not interested in having my personal address included with my observations, so I manually set (for each observation) the location to “obscured”. Surely the obscured location is close enough?
Thanks for your patience, everyone 