Nice work!
I wouldn’t mind at all! 
I was on a roll, so I did the same for Germany while i was at it
Population numbers from 31.12.2023 from the Statistische Bundesamt (https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Population/Current-Population/Tables/population-by-laender-basis-2022.html)
all the numbers
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Länder | 2024 Verifiable Observations | 2024 Population | Obs. per Capita |
| Baden-Württemberg | 148,246 | 11,230,740 | 0.0132 |
| Bayern | 224,632 | 13,176,426 | 0.0170 |
| Berlin | 74,793 | 3,662,381 | 0.0204 |
| Brandenburg | 66,956 | 2,554,464 | 0.0262 |
| Bremen | 12,593 | 702,655 | 0.0179 |
| Hamburg | 15,097 | 1,851,596 | 0.0082 |
| Hessen | 138,166 | 6,267,546 | 0.0220 |
| Mecklenburg-Vorpommern | 34,579 | 1,578,041 | 0.0219 |
| Niedersachsen | 128,591 | 8,008,135 | 0.0161 |
| Nordrhein-Westfalen | 113,850 | 18,017,520 | 0.0063 |
| Rheinland-Pfalz | 71,111 | 4,125,163 | 0.0172 |
| Saarland | 14,321 | 1,014,047 | 0.0141 |
| Sachsen | 69,609 | 4,054,689 | 0.0172 |
| Sachsen-Anhalt | 32,516 | 2,144,570 | 0.0152 |
| Schleswig-Holstein | 123,456 | 2,953,202 | 0.0418 |
| Thüringen | 25,631 | 2,114,870 | 0.0121 |
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That strikingly dark green area in northern Germany is definitely tourism (state with few large cities/high numbers of seasonal visitors).
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I would have expected the mountain areas both in Germany and France to be greener for those tourism reasons, as well as the coasts, but that doesn’t seem to be the case 
In Wyoming vacationers are a huge portion of the total observations. I’d guess well above 50% (maybe above 75%) of observations are from people who don’t live in the state. There’s also a population of seasonal workers that probably makes a big contribution, and could be difficult to distinguish from the vacationers.
That tracks with population and visitation. Yellowstone had over 4 million visitors in 2024 and there are less than 600,000 people in Wyoming. I think it’s great that so many people make iNat part of their vacations.
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New Mexico top 10! Good job @jnstuart
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Woo! Maine is second on the list!
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It seems like it’s much easier for regions with smaller populations to “win” in these tables/maps. I guess that’s because it’s not unusual for even just one or two avid iNatters to make tens of thousands of observations in a few years, whereas it takes a lot of iNatters a lot of time to collectively reach millions of observations.
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Well, it seems as a North-Rhine-Westphalian I need to step up my game significantly in 2025 That’s just embarrassing!
Even though NRW has the highest number of inhabitants by quite a bit, which makes increasing obs per capita difficult, I think we should at least aim to beat Bavaria next year… At any rate, that shade of pink is unacceptable. 
Probably, but they also had a school-bioblitz with lots of different schools participating. That definitely helped too.
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Florida checking in here. I’m kind of surprised we rank so low. We can make observations year-round, and given the amount of IDs I make that seem to be submitted by tourists visiting the theme parks, it seems like we would rank higher.
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Right, I forgot about that. It does seem to have affected the numbers (about 2x as many observations as in 2023; Germany as a whole had about 1.5x as many observations in 2024 compared to 2023).
The mountainous regions in Germany are in some of the most populous states, so this probably cancels out a lot of the tourism effect. A more localized regional break-down would probably be needed. I suspect an intra-Bavaria comparision would look more like Brandenburg/Berlin on the right side of the map, where the green of Brandenburg likely represents a fair amount of observations by Berlin residents and vacationers.
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Well, clearly I need to get out and make more observations in Massachusetts. We can’t have both Vermont and Maine out-ranking us! I’m kidding, but I also need an excuse to get outside - minor ailments have kept me inside way too much this winter.
@comradejon, I’m curious if there’s any easy way to illustrate how the efforts by state have changed in, say, the last five or ten years?
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Limited by the choice of ready-made map on Datawrapper (I wanted one that has the same boundaries as the one on iNaturalist) but! Here’s the rough map for Europe.
EDIT: Map was wrong! Check further down in the comments for the updated map by @comradejon
Population numbers from Eurostat https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00001/default/table?lang=en&category=t_demo.t_demo_pop and where 2024 was not available, I used the next available ones, so it will not be completely accurate
Summary
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ALB | 18,668 | 2,761,785 | 0.0068 |
| AND | 2,258 | 85,101 | 0.0265 |
| AUT | 678,760 | 9,158,750 | 0.0741 |
| BEL | 121,154 | 1,182,049 | 0.1025 |
| BGR | 37,486 | 6,445,481 | 0.0058 |
| BIH | 12,545 | 3,417,089 | 0.0037 |
| BLR | 52,439 | 9,408,350 | 0.0056 |
| CHE | 191,282 | 8,960,800 | 0.0213 |
| CYP | 19,930 | 933,505 | 0.0213 |
| CZE | 304,370 | 10,900,555 | 0.0279 |
| DEU | 1,294,886 | 83,445,000 | 0.0155 |
| DNK | 289,101 | 5,961,249 | 0.0485 |
| ESP | 1,164,353 | 48,610,458 | 0.0240 |
| EST | 15,662 | 1,374,687 | 0.0114 |
| FIN | 286,265 | 5,603,851 | 0.0511 |
| FRA | 1,191,868 | 68,401,997 | 0.0174 |
| GBR | 1,659,877 | 67,025,542 | 0.0248 |
| GRC | 127,918 | 10,397,193 | 0.0123 |
| HRV | 99,978 | 3,861,967 | 0.0259 |
| HUN | 168,450 | 9,548,627 | 0.0176 |
| IRL | 71,672 | 5,343,805 | 0.0134 |
| ISL | 29,091 | 398,940 | 0.0729 |
| ITA | 773,092 | 58,989,749 | 0.0131 |
| KOS | 1,005 | 1,773,971 | 0.0006 |
| LIE | 1,265 | 40,023 | 0.0316 |
| LTU | 71,875 | 2,885,891 | 0.0249 |
| LUX | 79,646 | 672,050 | 0.1185 |
| LVA | 18,262 | 1,871,882 | 0.0098 |
| MCO | 858 | 38,300 | 0.0224 |
| MDA | 3,249 | 2,423,287 | 0.0013 |
| MKD | 4,620 | 1,826,247 | 0.0025 |
| MLT | 7,269 | 563,443 | 0.0129 |
| MNE | 18,550 | 616,695 | 0.0301 |
| NLD | 205,852 | 17,942,942 | 0.0115 |
| NOR | 74,525 | 5,550,203 | 0.0134 |
| POL | 369,998 | 36,620,970 | 0.0101 |
| PRT | 489,290 | 10,639,726 | 0.0460 |
| ROU | 68,177 | 19,064,409 | 0.0036 |
| SMR | 538 | 33,812 | 0.0159 |
| SRB | 35,477 | 6,605,168 | 0.0054 |
| SVK | 69,842 | 5,424,687 | 0.0129 |
| SVN | 53,701 | 2,123,949 | 0.0253 |
| SWE | 153,166 | 10,551,707 | 0.0145 |
| TUR | 86,934 | 85,372,377 | 0.0010 |
| UKR | 302,679 | 40,997,698 | 0.0074 |
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The data and computational results are very interesting. Thank you. Further questions or better stated: wondering about other ‘variables’ when thinking of observations per capita in the year 2024.
Total population and observations for per capita (rates) and then ranking of states is a great way to dive deeper into the data. In addition, I was wondering if other variables could impact our understanding of iNaturalist activities per state.
For example, as you noted - Vermont has 204,426 (verifiable observations), and I was also curious of how many observers were noted for that state 7,907 - and then how many species were recorded 8,171 - given the per capita. The reason I ask is getting a sense of additional nuances beyond per capita.
For example, going down the list Oregon is noted with a significant (not statistical significance or I am not sure if it is) change in total population number and verifiable observations, and then I noted there were 19,177 observers tabulated (for 2024) and 12,143 species recorded.
And then California had 89,064 observers (2024) and 24,590 species recorded (2024).
I am curious about the ‘effect’ of observers in iNaturalist per state (in addition to total population) and then how many (or what percentage) of observations are a factor of ‘heavy duty’ (enthusiastic and dedicated) observers per state? {e.g., top ten observers per state contribute to what % of observations per state)?
Finally, when I started making observations a few years ago - I was always ‘jealous’ of those states with “year round” opportunities to observe in a moderate climate - especially as an identifier - and watching all those interesting species being submitted in the deep winter (where I thought things went dormant and quiet with observations in my area) - but Vermont, Maine, Alaska, New Hampshire showing a different and enlightening perspective on my notion of seasonal cycles.
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I see that I have to save the honor of Baden-Württemberg and start posting my large backlog of observations of the last few years 
Can’t let Schleswig-Holstein overcome us in terms of nature…
Though my guess would have been that there is more tourism in the South of Germany (Alpes, Lake Constance and Black Forest as the main points), but maybe skiiing and hiking does not automatically correspond to nature observation…
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My immediate sense for the south-central swamp of pink is because that area was historically farmland and now has rapid development- so a sad combo of higher populations and little remnant, intact habitats to explore. Also not as much tourist visitation aside from Gettysburg National Park (where most folks are more concerned about history, rather than the really cool grassland remnants) and the area around Lancaster (where people go to see the Amish, outlets, etc). It’s a shame because those counties harbor a ton of interesting species (many at the northern edges of their ranges) and rare habitats like our serpentine barrens.
Surprised there’s not much iNat traffic in counties with the Appalachian Trail, but people are probably eager to get away from our rocky sections of the trail as fast as they can.
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Really cool to see this, however there is an error with the Newfoundland data. I get my NL data from the Biodiversity of Newfoundland and Labrador Project and it looks like you used all the observations in the project. Filtering for 2024 gives me 37,571, which comes to 0.06 per capita. But this is a jump of 11,000 observations compared to 2023 for the province!
(Humble brag that I was the top observer in NL for 2024)
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And I think Montour being dark green is just a result of me being a crazy person: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2182&view=observers
Smallest county in the state by area, but I work hard to keep it as the most Lepidoptera-rich county by iNat observations. lol
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Hi, nice map! I do think you have the population of Belgium off (by 10-fold), which would explain why it’s so green. Would be great to see an updated map
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You are absolutely right, thanks for catching that! I don’t have the time to do anything more today, but i’ll have an updated map tomorrow! And maybe a more detailed German map too, because I can.
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