Sorry, could you please use “I’m” or ‘I am’, instead of ‘am’ :)
This is a topic that has boggles my mind sometimes too. Seems projectnoah does not rival iNat in user base, and quite strange there’s no mention of it in this thread.
project noah was a parallel path similar to iNat, but it seems to have focused more on quality of photos and on user engagement rather than data despite the vigorous debate here on whether iNat does enough of that themselves. My understanding is project Noah is kind of just adrift and doesn’t do much any more but it could be wrong. I stopped using it in 2011 when I found iNat :)
6 Likes
Interesting, and thanks for the history.
the non-judgemental value attached to inat observations is something that I really like, and also helps convince people that their observations are valuable.
5 Likes
So I just came across this data that Research Grade iNaturalist observations are the 21st largest ontributing dataset to GBIF.
Outstandingly (or Astoundingly) Ebird is the largest and even the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) contributes more than iNat RG .
or am i reading all this wrong
Thanks
2 Likes
Each bird counts as one observation from eBird, you see a flock of a thousand birds => GBIF gets them all.
4 Likes
That is true ! Good perspective
I can spend a whole day observing nature and get maybe 300 unique observations. If I were to spend even half that time birding the number of Individual birds seen would be equal or more.
Just shows that despite the overwhelming number of “small creatures” however much we count them we will have a hard time getting that many numbers of bird “observations”.
In India EBIRD is both the biggest it terms of users , and the number of checklists (1.42 Million - let alone bird numbers) matches the total number of observations on the India Biodiversity Portal (1.46 Million)
It still is a bit of a shock really !
4 Likes
Also, only a subset of observations from iNaturalist is transmitted to GBIF (Research Grade), whereas on platforms like eBird, observation.org or artportalen.se the largest amount of data are observations without media.
An interesting metric is looking at publications:
eBird: 263 citations in GBIF (with >800 million datasets)
artportalen: 523 (>82 mill.)
observation.org: 290 (40 mill.)
inaturalist: 1,500 (>32 mill.)
6 Likes
Actually not. The count of the birds entered into ebird is stored as a field called individual count within a single record. So for example this single accounts for 230 individual ducks.
https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/3131754715
The huge number is the function of all ebird records regardless of if there are media being imported.
2 Likes
Still it’s much easier to get those numbers with species alone.
wow this is really nice, and relevant as I guess it indicates “trust & reliability” in data.
1 Like
The pros about photo-centrism is aesthetic and quality control. It would also encourage users to improve on their photography.
I started out with PN, and i must confess that the quality of photos I witnessed was a great stimulus to improving my skills. I switched and dwelt more on iNat about 6 months later.
Cons. Users with information and no decent photos will feel left out or discriminated against.
The platform eventually became a Flickr or Instagram for nature.
Facebook groups don’t count I guess :)
Welcome
Are there facebook groups that are bigger than iNaturalist or ebird ?
Probably. But the quality varies across HUGE - lookit the pretty picture I found - what is it - dunno.
To smaller, highly specialist and focused groups, similar to the relevant section of iNat.
1 Like
With all the “zuck” coming out of the digital bits and pieces and their sordid history of fanning flames and more am happy to not have anything to do with them.
Starting in 2013 the GBBC synced with eBird so that any checklist covering longer than 15 minutes and submitted as usual through eBird during the GBBC time period also automatically contributes to the GBBC and vice versa.
I don’t know if that means duplicates in GBIF or what, but worth taking into account. Since that year the GBBC has kind of been an annual 4-day sample of eBird submissions (although I’m sure the number of submissions to eBird increases with the advertising of the GBBC happening).
Interesting, does not all ebird data anyway go to GBIF - is that the duplication you are referring too , or am I mistaken in thinking that all ebird data (of valid checklists) does not go to GBIF.
With regards to GBBC, and other ebird events – yes they are increasing in popularity and a lot is being done by ebird and the country wide units / groups - it provides an opportunity to just bird.
Difficult to tell really
@tiwane @kueda Can you confirm whether right now iNat is the data partner with the highest number of citations in GBIF?
I tried, but could not find a way to filter or export for this value, and clicking through the first 12 or so pages, some other datasets came close but did not reach the number of currently 1,900 citations
1 Like