Was Your State a Slacker? - 2024 USA Observations Per Capita (Edit: Canadian data and European/African maps now in comments!)

Nice work!
I wouldn’t mind at all! :slightly_smiling_face:

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
9 Likes

That strikingly dark green area in northern Germany is definitely tourism (state with few large cities/high numbers of seasonal visitors).

4 Likes

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 :thinking:

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.

7 Likes

New Mexico top 10! Good job @jnstuart

4 Likes

Woo! Maine is second on the list!

1 Like

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.

2 Likes

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. :triumph:

Probably, but they also had a school-bioblitz with lots of different schools participating. That definitely helped too.

6 Likes

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.

2 Likes

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.

3 Likes

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?

3 Likes

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
11 Likes

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.

3 Likes

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 :joy:
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…

4 Likes

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.

3 Likes

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)

4 Likes

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

12 Likes

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

1 Like

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.

2 Likes