I’m going to be running iNaturalist workshops at schools this spring, and want to create a project for all of the students’ observations. I know you can create non-contiguous geographical boundaries for projects, so in my case each separate school can have its own polygon on the map that are all within the umbrella project.
Is there a way to filter for observations within a specific geographical area inside a project? I’d like to be able to keep all of the schools together in one project, as it is being funded by a grant and it would be good have them all grouped together for reporting. But it would also be useful to be able to search each school separately, so when I go back to the schools I can easily present them with the data that just their school collected.
I’ve noticed that in this project, which seems to encompass the whole globe, under the observations there’s a link that says “More Observations,” and that takes you to a map that you can draw rectangles or circles on to search within those bounds.
But in this project, there’s no “More Observations” button that I can see, and I can’t figure out a way to search a smaller area. Granted, this project covers a small area already, but the upcoming project with schools will be a bunch of sites spread throughout my regional district.
It sounds like you want collection projects (one for each school) grouped under an umbrella project for all the schools, but you already mentioned having an umbrella project. Is there something that this setup wouldn’t get you that you are looking for?
That’s close to what I’m looking for, but since the schools will be scattered throughout different municipalities, it would also be useful to be able to draw a box around a municipality and collect project’s observations within that area. I find it odd that within a project, iNat lets you search for a place name to filter that way, but you can’t always draw a bounding box on a map. In my case, the municipality I live in isn’t represented accurately by iNat’s map so when searching I usually draw a box around it myself.
I might just have to do the municipality thing manually though, it’s possible that what I’m looking for is too specific to be an iNat feature.
Ok I just realized my mistake; I was looking at the project’s observations using the “Map” and “Identify” tabs. It looks like using Search tab lets you draw an area within a project. Disregard!