Is there a way to refine a search to show observations that are just listed as a country but not with finer location data? I’ve been identifying Basiliscus in Panama and ran into an issue where an observation whose location is just listed as Panama pins to the country name on the map. In this case, it pins observations out of range for one of the species so that users using range as a clue for identification are mis-identifying based on that pin. I want to go back and examine any observation whose location is JUST Panama and not something more detailed like Panama City or the other thousands of observation returned when I filter location as Panama. This isn’t the only time I’ve run into this issue. The same thing happened with a lot of Iguanidae in Mexico when their location is JUST reported as Mexico without something more precise…pin is on the name Mexico, which could alter the ID. It would help greatly if I could eliminate any observation with a more detailed location as I’m less concerned about this issue.
You could search for those coordinates, but the location isn’t entered the same way the ID is (where you could leave it at a higher level). So I’m not sure you could easily do what you’re looking for. Every location is just coordinates + accuracy. If someone is entering coordinates by searching just for a country, that could be an issue, but I’m not sure of an easy way to search for that.
It’s also important to check the accuracy in these cases. I’ve seen this before thinking an observation had an inaccurate location, but the accuracy was big enough to be plausible.
This may work. Was playing with it briefly.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?place_id=7003&acc_above=400000
You should be able to limit it to the taxa you’re interested in. I had a look but didn’t find any Basiliscus that suit it’s criteria. Do you have an example of one of these problem observations?
acc_above in the search bar limits to observations with a positionl accuracy above what number you apply to it. In this case, I tested what positional accuracy occurs if you just put in “Panama” and it’s around ~418000 so I just put it at Panama and put the search at 400000m.
what is happening here is that a user types ‘Panama’ into the ‘search for a location bar’ in the upload screen, and then Google Maps assigns a single point location with a very large accuracy value
this should occur consistently each time, so all of these records should have the exact same coordinates
(basically what @bioshots_jm said, his post didn’t show when I made mine)
It’s also important to check the accuracy in these cases. I’ve seen this before thinking an observation had an inaccurate location, but the accuracy was big enough to be plausible.
“Panama” and it’s around ~418000 so I just put it at Panama and put the search at 400000m
For the observations in Panama, the accuracy always seems to be exactly the same at 175.8 km. It’s one of the clues I’ve noticed that tell me ‘oh, that’s not a specific location, but a general location.’ Of course, it took me a while to notice that fact. However, for the observations in Mexico the accuracy 1858.95 km. This suggests to me that the accuracy has something to do with the size of the country being used as general location, so no one accuracy would find all observations…it would be country-by-country specific.
this should occur consistently each time, so all of these records should have the exact same coordinates
Yes, exactly the same coordinates and exactly the same accuracy for that country each time. So, perhaps finding one, then searching for accuracy equal to that value would return. However, when I tried that using @bioshots_jm search string it returned a bunch of observations that were not in question, but with that accuracy.
For Costa Rica the error bubble is 212.09 km
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