A question for iNat staff please.
When adding new iNat observations of photographs,
iNat checks the photographs for their metadata (eg. Exif?, IPTC?, XMP?, etc.).
Well known is that the observation uploader checks for the:
- date and time each photograph was made (of course), the first uploaded photograph for that observation automatically providing that observation’s date–time.
- latitude and longitude coordinates (commonly from GPS), thus setting the observation’s location automatically to the coordinates of its first uploaded photograph with coordinates.
Alluded to in a few topics here in the iNatForum, is that the observation uploader checks photographs’ other metadata for taxonomy names matching iNat’s taxonomy,
to add as the identification of the organism
(using the taxonomically most finely resolved matching name (lowest rank) it finds in the metadata).
Specifically which photographs’ metadata fields does iNat search please?
In a listing please?
I have ca. 13,000 photographs of plants, animals and fungi, with my own custom metadata added to them over the last 10 years,
including species and taxonomic family,
phenology observations including:
flowering, fruiting, new growth, seedling germination, sapling life stage, stag (dead) tree life stage;
feeding, hunting, mating, birthing, metamorphosing, moulting, laying eggs, sleeping, soaring, swimming, etc.;
dispersing offspring (in action, eg. seeds floating on the wind out from capsules on a tree, baby turtles digging out of the beach sand nest and clambering down the beach to the ocean, young birds’ first flights out of the nest, etc.),
interactions between flora, fauna and fungi,
and so on.
Further more, occasionally I have more freeform notes in metadata fields such as UserComments, which directly within some cameras’ interfaces we can add to the photograph after making it.
For my purposes, if iNat checks some metadata fields and not others,
I can bulk transfer my metadata from the existing fields I use into the fields iNat checks.
Doing this before I upload will make all these observations automatically receive my pre-existing identifications,
and include my phenology information at least in observation notes, if iNat’s not currently set up to import that directly into phenology annotations.
I understand this information from iNat staff will have a lot of use amongst many iNat users.
Sincerely,
Jason.
Related:
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-identifies-my-fish-sightings-without-my-clicking-anywhere/18664
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/web-uploader-not-recognizing-scientific-binomials-or-gps-data-in-photo-metadata/37243
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/metadata-how-to-add-a-taxon-name-that-is-picked-up-by-inat-on-upload/3691
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/file-metadata-field-that-maps-to-observation-notes-in-web-uploader/38375
-
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/gps-not-extracted-from-metadata-in-web-uploader/36507
.