If I’m in the woods, or a field, and I record a sound but can’t see where it’s coming from, what should I put as the radius of precision?
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You probably have a rough idea of how far out from you it’s originating and in what direction. I’d put a circle around where I’m standing and extend it out that distance. Approximating is fine.
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Unless I see the bird/animal too, I’ll just do a 5m radius around where I was at the point of recording, then add Notes that describe my guess as to direction/distance.
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Also depends on how good your recording equipment is. If I use my cellphone to record a bird call, that bird is never very far from me even if I don’t see it. If it’s completely out of sight and I can’t even estimate where it is and in what direction, my recording is probably going to be so faint it’s useless.
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With photo observations the GPS position is the location of the camera, not the location of the subject of the observation (might be a long way off with a telephoto lens). The precision circle then relates to how well that camera location is known. So why not the same for audio observations?
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Officially not, though. By the rules, one is supposed to correct the position marker in the observation for a plant or animal photographed at a distance. Of course, in practice, I am sure few people bother – especially since one rarely takes photos from a distance of kilometres where the error might matter.
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I think you put your best guess. The human ear is usually pretty good at telling the difference between a mouse squeaking in the leaf litter at your feet and the trumpeting of a bull elephant echoing off a nearby mountain. Your best guess at the distance based on the sound will be accurate enough. You can always add a bit extra as a safety margin when you feel unsure.
there are no official rules. locations are recorded in all sorts of different ways across different obsevations. as tony_willis notes, the mobile apps will position things based on the location of the camera by default. lots of folks record tracks to place locations, and those will be based on the location of the GPS receiver, too. if you select a location by searching for a place name, it will be based on the place definition of the place in whichever geocoding provider is being used. even the accuracy circle recorded when placing a pin manually on a map will differ based on which platform is used to record the pin, and because maps themselves are not totally accurate, even if you place your pin at the same landmark as represented on different maps, you could end up with different coordinates recorded. in other words, there’s really no consistency in the locations that are recorded in the system.
that said…
you should put whatever you think is reasonable, or leave the accuracy value blank altogether.
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I put in my best guess for where the bird is and don’t get worried about it. I doubt anyone will expect to find that bird in the exact place it was.
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I look at it this way. Using the description: “An observation records an encounter with an individual organism…“ then we are logging the “encounter” not the “organism”. There are two parties involved in the encounter: the organism and you.
Remember, iNaturalist is about people. From the about page: “iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.“
Placing the location where you are standing when you hear the sound would be correct.
Placing the location where the organism is located is also correct.
Anything in-between may also be correct. (It is correct if the location of either the organism or observer are included in the accuracy circle.)
As noted by previous comments, many observations are placed using a phone or camera GPS and that still seems to match the definition of an “observation.”
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You should place and extend the circle based on your guess of which direction and how far away the animal was. Including your own location is definitely not required. I know a lot of people use uncorrected GPS data from phones and cameras, but while that’s not enough of a problem for anyone to worry about, it is also not the desired standard.
The GPS position is the location of the GPS pole. I’ve made a few observations in which the GPS pole is in the picture. In some cases, though, the position is the location of the prism pole, computed from previous GPS measurements.
In one of my sound observations, a cicada in Edneyville, the position is the location of the house corner where I was standing (and found an exuvia), computed after I had shot the other house corners with the total station and drawn it on the map. I put a big circle, because I could only tell that the cicada was somewhere on the lot.
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