Observing entire ecosystems

I really like this site:
[https://www.commanster.eu/commanster.html](https://Ecology of Commanster)
You can begin with a biotope and get a list of the species they live in
Click a particular species, and see what it eats and which species can eat it. (the trophic chain, I mean)
In iNaturalist, when a picture is uploaded you could add a tag to show which biotope is associated to.

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For what its worth, I think iNaturalist is about a lot more than the species per se, so almost all of my observations include one context photo to indicate where the observation was made. In fact, Iā€™d much appreciate it if everyone did the same. For those who donā€™t see the need, the context photo can be ignored, but there are some of us for whom it is potentially relevant.

Since many of my observation are of small things - invertebrates, mosses or wee herbs, the context photo often contains an obvious marker of the location of the small thing. Credit to my daughter for having gifted me a fluoro orange sun hat, which is now de rigeur field equipment for me.

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On bplant.org, I created the capacity to upload a single photo or set of photos, and then identify a list of plants in them. It was inspired by the way ebird.org allows users to report lists of birds.

That was before I knew of iNaturalist though; once I learned of iNaturalist I didnā€™t want to be reinventing the wheel or directly competing, so Iā€™ve focused more on developing other aspects of the site besides reporting observations of plants, mainly things like articles, ID guides, and range maps, and the ecoregion articles and maps. I also noticed that, seeing just how tricky crowd-sourced ID was, from using iNaturalist, I realized that if we were to do something of the sort on bplant, weā€™d need to re-imagine it relative to the way I had initially imagined it. I had imagined it working more like ebird and Iā€™m not fully convinced that is a viable model for plantsā€¦perhaps in the end but I will need to add more checks-and-balances to ensure accurate ID.

Perhaps if some day the project grows big enough that we have a staff of multiple full time people, we can return to further developing that system.

Another related topic that Iā€™ve been thinking of, and perhaps a project I might undertake in the near future, is the idea of taking photographs of certain vegetation cover types. USDA materials have at least three different classifications of ecosystems, plant associations, and cover types.

So for instance there are the Kuchler plant associations, and SAF (Society of American Foresters) Forest Cover Types, and FRES (Forest-Range Environmental Study?) ecosystem types like found here.

I find these fascinating. And I wish there were better documentation on them. I donā€™t know of an online reference with full articles on the Kuchler or SAF forest cover types, there are just lists, nothing extensive, which is sad because you could write tons on each individual type.

But likeā€¦I would looooooove to start accumulating photos of each type and then have an article on each one, with an index of photos. I actually have this on my ā€œback burnerā€ list. I would like to get to it perhaps after I finish the ecoregion articles for North Americaā€¦butā€¦this might be a while because Iā€™m not even halfway done with them and have been working on it for about two years.

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Probably the majority of my observations are of the ecology, usually vegetation-focused, but sometimes habitat (with no fauna observed or identified), and occasionally my interest is the soil or water.

I struggled for some months to meet the iNat guidelines and aims, and arrived at a method which is by no means always satisfying to idntifiers, but probably those people have learned to ignore my uploads. Some others routinely confirm my IDs where they can, repetitive and boring as they may be, because they appreciate my goal.

I am monitoring a small area over time, to learn more about wild regeneration, weed invasion and other ecological threats including human constructions and their impacts on biodiversity and ecology, so it is VERY repetitive, but invaluable to the learning of the reality of the situation and possibly successful strategies , rather than idealized or ideological ones.

To achieve this within this species-based tool, I try, as you did in the above exampleā€¦successfully, in my viewā€¦ to choose a recognisable specimen or group of specimens, and when possible provide a close up to accompany the wide view as an additional image. I am not always successful at that, due to terrain comparable to you having to climb into the flooded forest to get a close up of the Licorice fern.

I think your observation above is one of the most interesting and informative I have seen on iNat, by the way. I personally feel frustrated looking at specimens devoid of habitat or context, leaving me with so many questions.

I also make observations to identify and learn more about species new to me, and in this regard iNat has been spectacularly useful, this new knowledge feeding into the habitat restoration and management

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