Question about Traditional Projects

General
1

I am in the planning stages for a traditional project for Mature Trees in a local woodland. I am adding in fields and have a question about these. For each tree is it possible to record different information in a field for several years in succession to reflect changes in the tree’s life?
Scenario: I add a tree height field, make the project live, volunteers record this information for “Tree A”. Then we have a massive winter storm and the top snaps off. The following year volunteers come to this tree (which is now shorter) can they record the new tree height or do they have to edit previously entered data?

2

Every time the tree is recorded, it’s a new observation. So the next time will be a new observation and the new height can be recorded in the (empty) field for “height” you have added. The most important is to link all observations of “Tree A” together, for example with the field “similar observation set”. Maybe somebody else can explain this better than me.

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3

Thanks for your reply. I haven’t come across “similar observation set” - so I’ll have a look into it. I was planning downloading all the data and uploading into a SQL database which would make it relatively simple as we will be tagging each tree. But “similar observation set” may give an easier way of doing this within iNaturalist.

4

Here is an observation of mine with similar observation set: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/200382941 . If you click on similar observation set, there is a link on how to use it and if you view “observation with this field and value” you get this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Similar%20observation%20set=200382941. I think it’s a nice overview.

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7

I use “similar observation set” for observations of different individuals in the same region that may be the same species, still to identify.

For the same specimen, there is another observation field named “same specimen over time”.
For the value of the field, consider entering the ID number of the first observation in the set, to ensure it won’t overlap by chance with another unrelated set.

8

Thanks. I’m just away to check those links.

9

Ah, another field I hadn’t come across. I’ll go away and investigate this. Thanks.