iNaturalist User Trends with R

there may be more efficient ways to collect user stats than to aggregate / visualize after downloading a user’s entire set of observations, especially if the user has a lot of observations. i think each of the things you’re showing can be accomplished via specific API endpoint (http://api.inaturalist.org/v1/docs/):

  • Major Taxa – do a Get Observations request for each iconic taxon, returning just one record for each request with only the id, and then use the total_results value from each result set.
  • Top Species – use the Get Observations Species Counts endpoint
  • Quality Grade – do a Get Observations request for each quality grade, returning just one record for each request with only the id, and then use the total_results value from each result set.
  • Month – use the Get Observations Histogram endpoint
  • Map – use the Observations Tiles set of your choice, plus the associated UTFGrid if you want to be able to show associated details when clicking on a marker.

what you created may be a good learning exercise, and it may work for many use cases, but you may want to consider making it more efficient if you find that other people start using it a lot.

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