Problem: My new Collection Project is missing Suitable Observations That Are In My Traditional Project:

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Problem: My new Collection Project is missing Suitable Observations That Are In My Traditional Project:

I have a Traditional project with 894 observations which meet the criteria of ‘dead’ birds observed on campus. In the Traditional project all the observations were added manually to the project. Here is a link to the Traditional project:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/penn-bird-strikes

I have created a Collection Project which uses an iNaturalist Place (defined by a KLM polygon) that defines the boundary of the campus, the defined area that the Collection Project is searching for suitable observations. The only other criteria are: find all ‘Aves’ species that are also ‘Dead’.

For the Collection Project I have also set the suitable observations to accept:

Data Quality: Research Grade, Needs ID, Casual
Media Type: Any
Establishment Means: Any
Date Observed: Any
And Unchecked: Only display observations from project members (people who have joined the project)

Here is a link to the Collection project:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/in-search-of-dead-birds-at-penn

The good news is The Collection Project works and located 795 observations that meet all the criteria. But the bad news is missing and not collecting an additional 129 observations that should also meet the criteria.

If there is a trick for sorting out which observations from my Traditional Project are not showing up in my Collection Project?

Is it possible to the query my Traditional project to find all the observations that don’t have this Observation Field set to ‘Dead’?

Is it possible to search the Traditional Project to find the observations that are NOT also in the Collection Project

Any insight into how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

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This is a typical problem with relatively small places like college campuses. Observations near the borders of the place with accuracy circles (say, observation from somewhere in this 10 m circle) that stick out past the edge of your place won’t be included.

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I don’t have time to figure out a better URL, but this url shows all Bird observations within the Philadelphia area that are NOT in the project. You might need to tweak it to only include project members. You can probably tighten the Place too.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?iconic_taxa=Aves&not_in_project=in-search-of-dead-birds-at-penn&place_id=2983&subview=map

As mentioned above, it is probably a coordinate/GPS error where the accuracy boundaries fall too far outside your polygon.

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At least some of the difference is due to observations that lack the Alive or Dead? = Dead annotation. This URL should elucidate the 188 observations that are different. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?iconic_taxa=Aves&not_in_project=in-search-of-dead-birds-at-penn&project_id=penn-bird-strikes

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The majority of the observations missing from the collection project just don’t have Alive or Dead filled out. If you annotate them as dead, they should automatically get added to the project.

Here are the observations that are missing (they’re in the traditional project, but not in the collection): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id,research,casual&not_in_project=in-search-of-dead-birds-at-penn&project_id=penn-bird-strikes

And more specifically, here are the missing observations which are unannotated as alive or dead: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id,research,casual&not_in_project=in-search-of-dead-birds-at-penn&project_id=penn-bird-strikes&without_term_id=17

You can also go over the ones which are marked Alive or Dead, but are still missing from the collection project: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id,research,casual&not_in_project=in-search-of-dead-birds-at-penn&project_id=penn-bird-strikes&term_id=17

They have a variety of issues keeping them out of the project, e.g. one in State College, PA, one on the other side of Philly, one marked Alive, one with too large an accuracy circle.

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Thank you! I’ll study these queries and start cleaning up!

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