Map place outlines for observations

General
1

I just noticed logging in today, my observations were related to a rough map outline in red, showing “Chihuahuan Desert”. It appears to be from choosing Filters, then entering it under Place, though I don’t recall ever using the filter for “Place”.

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Questions:

  1. Are those map outlines editable by their original creator?
  2. Is there a way to create a finer map outline other than circular or rectangular (like the one I can filter for “Chihuahuan Desert”)?
  3. Is there a list of such land feature or regions?

Thanks for your help.

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2

Welcome to the forum!

Can you post a link to what you are seeing? This will help others know exactly what you are referring to.

iNat has some places loaded by iNat from different govt/official sources, but also allows user-created places.

This seems to be the place you are looking at:
https://www.inaturalist.org/places/chihuahuan-desert

You can search for places via https://www.inaturalist.org/places

The help for making a place is: https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000175019-how-to-make-a-place-on-inaturalist

3

Did you set your Default Search Place in Account Settings to Chihuahan Desert?

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4

I just found that field and set my default search place. Thanks for telling me about that.

5

Thanks for the information. I would have sent you a link to what I was seeing, but had to do a screenshot, which explains it. You answered my questions, so I will hopefully be adding some helpful content soon, I look forward to creating a place map or two.

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6

If you look at the data inside, each observation is listed under dozens of Places, which are polygons of in to large size representing different hierarchical levels of jurisdiction, and non hierarchical regions like New England or South West, or Nell’s Project Area. One like that are editable by the owner. But you can create your own too. I’m not sure whether, when, or how a historical observation might get attributed to a new region, but it’s a place to start.

I’ve contemplated creating shapes enclosing a path a few meters wide along a GPS track, to label observations along popular trails. I’ve also contemplated using these jurisdictional polygons to build a timezone map to be able to attach a UTC timestamp to each observation.

7

Just FYI - while users can make new places, it is now discouraged as it is quite computationally intensive for iNat to add a new place so it slows down the site.
This is what it says on the page to create new places:

“New places are one of the biggest sources of slowdowns on iNat, so please consider not making a new place . While small places containing only a few thousand observations are usually ok, if you make a new place that contains a lot of observations, you’re going to slow iNat down for everyone else”

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