It depends on whether they are manually obscured by you (geoprivacy) or a sensitive species that is automatically obscured (taxon geoprivacy). If you aren’t affiliated with iNaturalist AU:
Obscured by you = ALA doesn’t get true coordinates
Obscured by taxon geoprivacy = ALA gets true coordinates
Obscured by you and taxon geoprivacy = ALA doesn’t get true coordinates
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Got it-- that’s what I would have assumed (that they can access sensitive taxa location data that are automatically obscured by iNat) I just wanted to make sure. Thank you!
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One issue that the ALA could address is to better line up Australian accepted taxon nomenclature and conservation status. This will have multiple benefits and get rid of a lot of confusion, particularly for taxa that do not occur anywhere else. The ALA holds all the data needed for this. Ideally it would be carried out as a project between iNaturalist Australia and iNaturalist. A lot of the issues must already be flagged as data comes across from iNaturalist to be filed in the ALA database so I hope that this is already on the radar.
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I’ve done some work on this between ALA and iNaturalist for sensitive species, ie those taxa that need to be obscured that are listed here: https://lists.ala.org.au/public/sdsLists. I found the matches for most records in iNaturalist and applied the status. This means that they’ll be obscured in iNaturalist, and we apply this obscuring logic again to all data that we bring into the ALA.
Similar work hasn’t been done on conservation status, and that is on our radar. For example we haven’t worked on the threatened species taxa on the EPBC Act and applied their conservation status in iNaturalist.
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@peggydnew great to hear that this work is underway. It is obviously very early in the process. I see why sensitive species, EPBC listed species and then hopefully State listed EVNT species would receive attention first. This will be one of the major benefits of iNaturalist Australia, which is by definition focussed on improving quality of information held in our region.
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It is early. It’s quite a big job - the listings are published all over the place, and then matching the taxonomies isn’t trivial! Good to hear that it’s valuable work.
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I assume this is probably not the case, but does using iNatAU allow the computer-vision to suggest only Australian species? If it did, I might use it! :D ;)
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No, everyone gets the same computer vision model. :-)
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But the conventional wisdom is that as we get in more RG Australian species the model will get better at recognising them.
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I’m assuming most of these difference remain true for iNat NZ? One thing I’m curious about is I was previously affiliated with iNat then moved to NZ and changed my affiliation. When I move to another location and change my affiliation again, will anything be lost? Are there benefits for using a specific region iNat site over the regular one? 
I’ve read everything above but am still a wee bit confused
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Where can I find out more about managing data for sensitive species? Having difficulties with ALA, so usually resort to contacting observers directly.
Thanks
FunEcol
@funecology I’m happy to help and redirect your questions. You can:
- see more information about how the ALA manages sensitive species here: https://sds.ala.org.au/
- email questions to support@ala.org.au.
- PM me directly on iNaturalist if you like.
- just ask your questions here, I’m sure other people are interested enough.
Yes, @daturademon everything above applies to iNat NZ functionality and relationship with respect to iNaturalist.org too.
Which site you affiliate with controls:
- Branding/logos on the email updates you get
- Which site has access to your email address.
- Which site can access coordinates you have personally hidden from public view. We know there are some number of users who would like to share that information with more than one network member, but right now you can choose just one.
Hope that helps. Feel free to reach out privately if you have any questions/considerations that you don’t want to discuss publicly.
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Thanks for that, you put it better than I did. I did imply that that the data would only be stored in Australia which I realise is incorrect, but I think I am correct in understanding that it will ensure that a copy of the data will also be held in Australia.
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Yes, you are correct about the copy of data in Australia. ALA is exceptional among the iNat Network members in the extent of its data syncing with iNat, so this aspect is not as generalizable. Most other network members just get an export of records once or twice a year.
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