Travel and Leisure Magazine has an article (online, at least. It popped up in my news-feed) regarding California’s superbloom and the use of iNat to predict when/where to observe it.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/california-super-bloom-2026-bloom-guide-11941626
INaturalist was posted on hackernews which is the cause of this huge surge in new users in late March. In fact I discovered INat through this post!
As always discussions on hackernews are always interesting because topics like privacy, AI-usage, and ethics were discussed.
looks like that post was from ~April 4th (welcome!!)
that late March surge was from being featured on Sunday Morning https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-inaturalist-app-users-have-fun-while-aiding-science/
Some interesting reading there 
Science is systematic, evidence‑based inquiry into the natural world that produces testable explanations and predictions, and a core part of calling something “scientific” is that its claims are replicable by others.
That means, if a large part of iNaturalist’s ongoing activity (which they are sheltering from government taxation under a public interest Science claim) is refining an inference model offered only as a service, it’s not capital-S Science unless they make the model build path open and others can replicate and test it freely.
There’s actually a fair case that it’s the exact opposite, as a public encouragement to systemic ignorance and belief without evidence.
but also some useful feedback from an iNat engineer about obscuring your home location, earlier in the thread.
