Reporting taxa of conservation concern collectively across an umbrella project's sites

General
1

I’d like to report, from an umbrella project, the total number of taxa of conservation concern recorded across all its stewardship sites collectively. Umbrella: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/conservation-outcomes-biodiversity-stewardship-sites

For a single site I normally get this from an Observations/Explore search — Place = the site, Project = “South African Red List Plants and Animals” (our national updated list of taxa of conservation concern), with view=species for the taxon count. For CNC and GSB I use the same Red List project with the event dates and Place = Southern Africa.

My understanding is that an umbrella project simply gathers its sub-projects onto one page, so it doesn’t natively expose a combined figure like this. Is there a supported URL/API query (or an R approach) to pull the collective count across all the umbrella’s sub-project places?

What I’ve tried:

  • Umbrella as project_id + apply_project_rules_for=south-african-red-list-plants-and-animals → returns common/non-threatened species in the browser, and an error via the API. It looks like the Red List project’s rule set is too large to be applied this way.
  • The reverse (Red List as project_id + apply_project_rules_for=<umbrella>) → returns countrywide Red List taxa (mostly Western Cape fynbos), whereas all my sites are in KZN/Mpumalanga — so the umbrella’s places aren’t being applied at all.

So apply_project_rules_for doesn’t seem to work in either direction here. Is there a native/supported way to do this, or do I need to enumerate the sub-project place_ids and OR them (place_id=a,b,c…) against the Red List project?

2

you’re effectively asking how to compare one project taxon list with another. it may work in your case because the geographic range for both seems to be limited to South Africa, but in other cases, it may not produce ideal results because whether a taxon is of conservation concern may vary across geographic ranges.

there have been lots of different third-party tools created that will help to compare two species lists. for example, this thread mentions at least a couple that will do the sort of comparison that you’re contemplating: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/is-it-possible-to-export-numbers-of-observations-by-species/62778.

since you’re also limited to a particular geographic range, you may also be able to use cs/csa/csi in conjunction with place_id as an alternative to the second project, assuming the conservation statuses are set up in a way that effectively mirrors the taxon setups in that second project.

3

use this:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/compare?s=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%3D

I find the easiest to add a place is to from the umbrella project, open the project; from the project open the place, click observations and click view more observations, and copy the place number in the url bar and put it in the compare line.
Usefully it easily displays unique cases and one can quickly count shared cases.

Problem: you are limited to 500 species. and there are 610 instances in KZN. However, there are only 441 plants, so if you do plants and animals separately …

4

Thank you, I’m sure we will have have a 1-on-1 as a follow up should I get stuck

5

Thanks so much for your input