I am submitting bunches of Obs that are pretty close to each other, usually within 8m radius, sometimes 16 and it saves significant time to use batch for the location. Is this acceptable? One disadvantage I notice is that it results in the map coordinates being placed exactly on top of each other so you cannot easily see individual obs or get an impression for the density of observations on the map. For example there are 57 Obs here but you wouldn’t get that impression from the map:
A related consideration is that even when I use phone GPS for location it is usually wildly inaccurate in my area, way worse than 16m. If the satellite image is good enough I can make a fairly good guess for where I am but still probably not much better than 8-16m most of the time. There are significant parts of my area of study where the satellite image is very poor (full shade) and there the accuracy is even worse.
The fundamental question I am asking is, is it OK to use batch location for multiple images when the accuracy is no better than all the members of the batch anyway or is this undesirable.
I usually use one location for all plants within a (smallish) park or some other area I visit. The accuracy is much fuzzier than 16 meters! So I say, just make sure the circle around the location includes all your sites and you’re fine. Compared to the whole wide world, even a place half a mile across is pretty small.
Because I am working on a local scale and have an interest in how different local environments are reflected in species present, I like to get locations as accurate as possible but now I can be confident that using batch for location is acceptable. Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.
Batch locations within such a small radius and time span are not the least problem to me. Anyone could find single obss. when changing to grid or listing view of these, as well as in nature in case one liked to to so.
Another, frequently problem i am facing are batch observations which gather single items from a wide range, so i had no chance to find these in nature.
I do search for higly specilized, host specific fungi which may grow solely on horsetails, genus Equisetum. In most cases such fungi might not be visible upon photos (though i found some 100s upon photos!), thus i liked to control populations myself.
That’s one reason why reliable, accurate locations are important in general for scientists and documentation of present diversity, what is in conflict with hiding locations to prevent poaching of rare, endangered species’.
I do suppose that the main part of naturalists (including scientists) and nature lovers will be thankfull for accurate locations, and willing to take care of endangered kinds of life.
I do think it’s odd, however, even in case i am stepping through a large clonal occurrence of Equisetum hyemale (could be many 1000s of years persisting), i will try to place my feet in between single shoots for not to trample down too many. I am convinced, there are many people in iNaturalist community doing it the same way.