Review of my area's CNC

[jasonhernandez74]

As I have mentioned in other threads, my CNC area, “Team Coastal NC,” covers a vast swath, essentially the entire North Carolina Coast and Coastal Plain, 32 counties. This might seem like an unfair competitive advantage compared with areas that are just a single city or metro area, but now that I review, I think maybe the organizers knew what they were doing after all.

In the area as a whole, 1,371 species were observed by 369 observers. Surprisingly, even some common species, such as Common Yarrow and Carolina Desert-chicory, have only one observation. I note that my observation of Aloe Yucca is the sole observation of that species, even though it is common enough on the barrier islands. At the other end of the scale, the most-observed species was the Pond Slider with 44 observations, followed by Japanese Honeysuckle with 32. Venus Flytrap, an endemic found at only a few sites, has 11 observations, the same number as the ubiquitous and weedy Lesser Hop-trefoil, suggesting that people were looking for it specifically.

When I narrow it down to just Pitt County, the numbers drop considerably: 64 observations of 59 species by just 18 observers. Of these, the most-observed taxa were Stretch Spiders, Eastern Eyed Click Beetle, Chinese Privet, and Wright’s Plantain, each with only 2 observations - and both observations of Stretch Spiders and one of Wright’s Platain are mine. I was the sole observer of 9 taxa altogether, including another very common, weedy species, Prickly Sow-thistle.

If I take it down to just the City of Greenville, I find 46 observations of 43 species by 15 observers. The previously mentioned Stretch Spiders and Wright’s Plantain are now the only taxa with more than one observation, and I was sole observer of 7 taxa – 16% of the total – 5 of which were also the sole observation for the project as a whole: Rhagovelia, Common Tarcrust Fungus, Taxiphyllum, Sibthorp’s Pennywort, and Trailing Pearlwort. All these were found simply by going to the stream a block away from my apartment and slowly scanning the banks.

Now, Greenville may not be a big city like Charlotte or Raleigh, but it has a major university with a robust biology program. These results surprise me.

[janetwright]

I don’t live near any of the CNC locations and have a hard time picturing what goes on, so reviews like this one are interesting. Would like to see more!

[lynnharper]

Well, then, let me review my local CNC, the Western Mass CNC. Western Massachusetts, that is - the four western counties of the state.

Over the four days of the CNC, 350 observers made 6,151 observations of 1,051 species, and 373 identifiers contributed their much appreciated knowledge and effort. Despite Saturday being annoyingly rainy, those 6,151 observations are almost half again the observations from 2024, which makes my co-organizer and me very happy.

Red Trillium was the most observed species, with 87 observations. Seven more native vascular plants were the next most observed species, followed by the first animal, Eastern Red-backed Salamander with 42 observations. Number 15 on the list is the first non-native, Multiflora Rose (we all must have had rose blinders on; it’s a very common plant here).

When I look at the map of our CNC observations, I see observations in most areas except southeastern Berkshire County and western Hampden County. I’ve been thinking we should try field trips to new places next year, so maybe we’ll go to some of the state parks and wildlife management areas in those regions.

We don’t get much official participation from the many university and college biology programs in our region, despite our best efforts. I mentioned 6,151 observations above; that is the official CNC number, but there were a few stragglers, so when I looked at our project just now, there were 6,173 observations. 3,557 of those are Research Grade (58%). 350 are Casual and I must confess that 129 of those are mine, because that’s how I make observations of birds, calling frogs, and the like.

It’s really quite gratifying to see the number of observations, species, observers, and identifiers go up each year, although I can’t say it’s really due to our organizing efforts - I think it’s due simply to the growth of iNat overall.

[annkatrinrose]

NC is split up into 5 projects for CNC. I was curious about how observations were distributed between counties and made this somewhat crude “heat map” with darker color = more observations. The red outlines are the boundaries between the different project areas.

This year’s “winner” (as usual) was the Triangle project around Raleigh, although they made on average ~50 fewer observations per county than last year.

Western NC centered in Asheville achieved its goal of over 10,000 observations with an average of ~75 observations more per county in that area (the vast majority in the Asheville area). Glad to see this as I was worried about the aftermath of hurricane Helene and Parkway closures possibly interfering but people were still eager to get out and find stuff to observe!

Charlotte Metro Area and the Piedmont project around Greensboro both had great increases of over 200+ observations per county compared to last year. The most significant increases happened in Richmond, Mecklenburg (Charlotte), Guilford (Greensboro) and Forsyth (Winston-Salem) counties.

Team Coastal had a slight average increase in observations per county, but unlike the other projects there doesn’t seem to be a big “hub” where most of the observations are centered.

And like others have noted, it seems university participation wasn’t really a big factor in any of these. I suspect that time of semester plays a huge role in this. CNC happened the last weekend of classes, we’re into final exams now. I can only speak for myself but my grand total of observations contributed this year is a whopping zero due to lack of time to do anything outside of exam prep and grading. I offered extra credit for CNC participation but only had one student participate. I guess everybody else was just busy with last week homework and studying for final exams.

[spiphany]

@jasonhernandez74

Now, Greenville may not be a big city like Charlotte or Raleigh, but it has a major university with a robust biology program. These results surprise me.

If the CNC was not widely advertised beyond iNat by local organizers, then participants are likely to be people who are already active iNat users, who may or may not have been aware that there was a CNC for their area or may or may not have consciously chosen to be competitive about it. The existence of a biology program does not necessarily correlate with (voluntary) iNat users or instructors being aware of iNat and the CNC and encouraging/requiring students to participate.

For more insight into who is participating, it might be useful to compare the number of observers during the CNC period and the number of observers in the same area during the rest of the year, or the percentage of new/otherwise inactive users who participated during the CNC period.

[AdamWargon]

@jasonhernandez74

Now, Greenville may not be a big city like Charlotte or Raleigh, but it has a major university with a robust biology program. These results surprise me.

@lynnharper

We don’t get much official participation from the many university and college biology programs in our region, despite our best efforts

@annkatrinrose

Like others have noted, it seems university participation wasn’t really a big factor in any of these

@spiphany

The existence of a biology program does not necessarily correlate with (voluntary) iNat users or instructors being aware of iNat and the CNC and encouraging/requiring students to participate.

Do you think it’s possible that:

• Many undergraduate biology majors are NOT interested in biodiversity, but are merely accumulating credits in order to enter med school or related programs?
• These biology programs may focus on molecular biology and other lab stuff, producing students who are ecologically illiterate?
• Even botany majors may be geared towards agricultural botany (crop science, plant physiology) etc.?
• Students may have pastimes like gaming that are not outdoors, so they may not view biodiversity surveying as an activity that is fun or relevant or relaxing or interesting?

[annkatrinrose]

Or as I said it might just be that CNC coincides with the busiest study weekend of the school year with last week of classes. Lots of end-of-semester assignments due, final exams looming large, student trying to catch up on missed class work. Very few people have time for it, much less for organizing any sort of local events around it. We do have a good number of ecology-minded students at our university who are very interested in biodiversity, know how to use iNat, and usually participate in a BioBlitz even without prompting but did nothing for CNC. Looking at my university’s contribution to CNC, it’s pretty pitiful at just a little over 100, especially given that we can get thousands in a week when running our own BioBlitz. We did find in the past that as far as BioBlitzes go, spring dates get less engagement over fall dates. The student who did it for extra credit for class made fewer than 10 observations. I suspect it has a lot to do with timing during the semester.

[janetwright]

I think all those could be factors. Maybe advertising to Outing Clubs at universities would pick up more students who have a genuine interest in nature.

[janetwright]

That’s interesting that NC does the whole state, divided into 5 regions. Seeing that, I was curious how many other states do that, so I tried to pull up projects with “city nature challenge” in the title, but this turned out to be very confusing – some 3300 project titles came up, including all years, and of course many locations, and I couldn’t easily find US States.

[bouteloua]

@janetwright

I was curious how many other states do that, so I tried to pull up projects with “city nature challenge” in the title, but this turned out to be very confusing – some 3300 project titles came up, including all years, and of course many locations, and I couldn’t easily find US States.

You can zoom into the map here to see the different projects. Most states aren’t fully covered, just city metros: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2025

[annkatrinrose]

Interesting - looks like NC is an outlier in that regard. I suspect this may be because there is a state-wide BioBlitz organized to coincide with CNC? Just out of curiosity I made an umbrella project to compare NC regions and years and it seems Western NC is the only region with a steady increase in observations. The other regions all have flipped back and forth a bit between stronger and weaker years in terms of numbers of observations made.

[DianaStuder]

Cape Town had a huge mountain fire raging.
Including this obs taken as cmerry was running for her life (while her car burnt out). Helicopter waterbombing, but still iNatting.

[spiphany]

@AdamWargon

Do you think it’s possible that:

• Many undergraduate biology majors are NOT interested in biodiversity, but are merely accumulating credits in order to enter med school or related programs?
• These biology programs may focus on molecular biology and other lab stuff, producing students who are ecologically illiterate?
• Even botany majors may be geared towards agricultural botany (crop science, plant physiology) etc.?
• Students may have pastimes like gaming that are not outdoors, so they may not view biodiversity surveying as an activity that is fun or relevant or relaxing or interesting?

Any of the above, or other reasons such as:

• Someone might be a biology student and even be interested and active in observing nature in a naturalist sort of way, but not know about iNat;
• They might use some other platform (e.g., someone who is primarily a birder might use eBird instead);
• They may not find iNat to be a meaningful way to record their experiences (not everyone finds satisfaction in cataloging and classifying, even biology majors);
• They might be in a program that already involves a lot of field surveys and thus not feel the need to additionally go out and record findings on iNaturalist.
• As pointed out above, at some universities the timing of the CNC coincided with exams, so students simply may not have had the time or energy to dedicate to other activities besides studying on that particular weekend.

People differ. I have a colleague who, like me, enjoys watching bees on her balcony and sometimes sends me photos to ID, but she has never shown any interest in joining iNat even though I’m sure she knows it exists because I have mentioned it plenty of times in our discussions.

[kestrel]

If I remember correctly, the original organizers in North Carolina (who organize the Triangle area around Raleigh), based at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, at some point got some funding from the State Government for CNC efforts, with the stipulation that the whole state had to be able to participate. So that’s when they recruited more organizers and divided the entire state into CNC regions! Nice to see the State support community science and biodiversity, but I also don’t know if they’re still supporting it.

[larry216]

The museum I volunteer for hosts four seasonal bioblitzes every year. That’s what introduced me to iNat, five years ago. They made their spring event part of the CNC for a couple years, but now they’ve dropped that affiliation, even though it still runs concurrently. I joined the CNC Global Project, to ensure that my own observations were counted in that.

Aside from the time I spent hiking/observing, I spent a lot of time adding identifications, basically keeping up with the flood of new observations, but not focusing on any particular projects. Looking at the the CNC results, what surprises me is that only about 40% of my identifications from April 25 to May 3 were counted in the CNC totals. I know we get a flood of observations from this event, but apparently there were still many others being made that didn’t fall into an CNC project.

[swords]

I’m in a county of northeast Ohio with a fairly sizeable network of county parks, yet I’ve never seen Inaturalist mentioned in any publication of the parks department, or in person, or on their website, and I don’t think anyone in their employ uses the site much. About 5 years ago it seems like someone made a few projects under them, and not much activity since. Most of the parks got 0 - 10 observations in the challenge.
Here’s the map of counties that was included in this CNC group, and a rough table with the estimated population of those counties, how many observers participated within that county, and that number compared to population. Keep in mind that the results are skewed of course by popular parks that people may travel a bit to visit.