Born and raised in Bradford County, Pa,. Most of the observations up there are probably mine or one other observer, though there are a few others in the western part of the county. It’s very rural and fairly empty–either farmland, forest , or swamp. I love, love, love looking for observations there because so many odd things pop up–often in my parents yard (e.g. forcepflies and emerald day moths). I suspect Tioga has more observations because it’s the location of a university and the PA Grand Canyon. It attracts tourists who like the outdoors. In fact I love looking for stuff in PA, in general, because so few people are doing the same thing. I’m not tripping over anybody and feel like I really am adding some knowledge about the area by loading up observations, especially for places like Bradford County, PA. Up there, people hunt or fish, but don’t really report on their catches. DE has some fun stuff, but there are more people, fewer areas to comb, and more observers so less “new” things to see. Honestly, I don’t mind if we are slackers–it’s kind of fun looking in less traveled spaces.
Really cool! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for all the identifying you do for PA too!
Maine’s lagging behind… I’d better get to work!
I checked my NL numbers and corrected the table. If you use the Places filter under More Filters, it uses the correct outline. Using the standard Location search just gives you a box, not sure what’s up with that.
Small population, lots of tourists.
I made a map for my home state of Missouri’s observations, but now you’ve made me want to make another for observations per observer for Missouri counties! Curse my love for maps and charts!
For anyone wondering, the blue counties in the bottom right have low populations and high observations because of Mark Twain National Forest and a couple other state parks in that area as well, at least that’s my guess as to why they blow the other counties out of the water.
I can think of a few other reasons for those blue counties on bottom. The Ozark National Scenic Riverways there is well worth a visit, and there is an introduced elk population in the area which probably brings a few tourists. Last April’s solar eclipse was also visible from that area, and that’s where I traveled to see it (along with many others, including one man I met who traveled there from Alaska). MDC (MO Dept. of Conservation) also brings in lots of seasonal field technicians to work on research projects in that area, many of whom probably use iNaturalist.
- Nebraska
I took a trip to Nebraska in 2023 to visit family and noticed that I was the top observer for several species after making just a handful of observations. Guess Nebraska being 48th goes some way towards explaining that.
I created a observations per observer map just now:
I completely forgot about the eclipse, tiwane posted something about how almost all places within the eclipse range had high numbers, and I know a good amount of people who went down that way to watch it. This map follows the eclipse theme (more or less), and all your other points also make a lot of sense and fit with this map! Although, I wonder what’s going on in Texas County - there’s a lot more observations per observer than any other county (63 compared to 25 or less everywhere else).
EDIT: Table is wrong, it flipped my alphabetical list
EDIT AGAIN: Table is now correct
Rough table I just figured out how to do
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adair | 26.875 | ||
| Andrew | 4.825 | ||
| Atchison | 8.2 | ||
| Audrain | 11.15384615 | ||
| Barry | 15.47133758 | ||
| Barton | 15.96907216 | ||
| Bates | 7 | ||
| Benton | 10.09638554 | ||
| Bollinger | 4.5 | ||
| Boone | 20.26690821 | ||
| Buchanan | 12.38888889 | ||
| Butler | 9.024691358 | ||
| Caldwell | 2.545454545 | ||
| Callaway | 6.888888889 | ||
| Camden | 7.981884058 | ||
| Cape Girardeau | 12.82687339 | ||
| Carroll | 10.16666667 | ||
| Carter | 12.73584906 | ||
| Cass | 10.79338843 | ||
| Cedar | 11.10169492 | ||
| Chariton | 6.703703704 | ||
| Christian | 12.38461538 | ||
| Clark | 5.294117647 | ||
| Clay | 12.97337278 | ||
| Clinton | 7.391304348 | ||
| Cole | 12.33809524 | ||
| Cooper | 3.35 | ||
| Crawford | 6.573033708 | ||
| Dade | 25.11764706 | ||
| Dallas | 9.506666667 | ||
| Daviess | 7 | ||
| DeKalb | 14.35 | ||
| Dent | 29.98648649 | ||
| Douglas | 11.825 | ||
| Dunklin | 17.2173913 | ||
| Franklin | 22.87426326 | ||
| Gasconade | 3.898305085 | ||
| Gentry | 10.64705882 | ||
| Greene | 16.66101695 | ||
| Grundy | 7.375 | ||
| Harrison | 8.790697674 | ||
| Henry | 17.640625 | ||
| Hickory | 18.69565217 | ||
| Holt | 7.977011494 | ||
| Howard | 9.010526316 | ||
| Howell | 12.44117647 | ||
| Iron | 9.7 | ||
| Jackson | 11.94162437 | ||
| Jasper | 12.60119048 | ||
| Jefferson | 18.45421903 | ||
| Johnson | 19.37426901 | ||
| Knox | 4.666666667 | ||
| Laclede | 6.941747573 | ||
| Lafayette | 15.79245283 | ||
| Lawrence | 20.42105263 | ||
| Lewis | 12.5 | ||
| Lincoln | 13.15068493 | ||
| Linn | 6.425 | ||
| Livingston | 3.7 | ||
| Macon | 6.25 | ||
| Madison | 6.073684211 | ||
| Maries | 6.925 | ||
| Marion | 3.915492958 | ||
| McDonald | 25.93243243 | ||
| Mercer | 2.444444444 | ||
| Miller | 7.768292683 | ||
| Mississippi | 18.06666667 | ||
| Moniteau | 3.423076923 | ||
| Monroe | 3.290322581 | ||
| Montgomery | 18.78666667 | ||
| Morgan | 10.67105263 | ||
| New Madrid | 9.347826087 | ||
| Newton | 26.71287129 | ||
| Nodaway | 6.137931034 | ||
| Oregon | 11.65714286 | ||
| Osage | 7.16 | ||
| Ozark | 7.622641509 | ||
| Pemiscot | 5 | ||
| Perry | 3.578947368 | ||
| Pettis | 11.94117647 | ||
| Phelps | 18.87614679 | ||
| Pike | 6.97826087 | ||
| Platte | 7.818452381 | ||
| Polk | 18.58947368 | ||
| Pulaski | 7.288888889 | ||
| Putnam | 5.5 | ||
| Ralls | 3.409090909 | ||
| Randolph | 5.230769231 | ||
| Ray | 6.333333333 | ||
| Reynolds | 10.1 | ||
| Ripley | 10.46666667 | ||
| St. Charles | 19.32886724 | ||
| St. Clair | 31.80769231 | ||
| St. Francois | 9.71686747 | ||
| St. Louis County | 15.57886244 | ||
| St. Louis | 11.00984529 | ||
| Ste. Genevieve | 13.6519337 | ||
| Saline | 6.552238806 | ||
| Schuyler | 1.375 | ||
| Scotland | 4.416666667 | ||
| Scott | 21.31707317 | ||
| Shannon | 14.10313901 | ||
| Shelby | 3.384615385 | ||
| Stoddard | 13.73529412 | ||
| Stone | 5.096428571 | ||
| Sullivan | 10.5 | ||
| Taney | 15.39613527 | ||
| Texas | 68.29885057 | ||
| Vernon | 8.658536585 | ||
| Warren | 10.36912752 | ||
| Washington | 9.903225806 | ||
| Wayne | 6.759615385 | ||
| Webster | 11.98550725 | ||
| Worth | 2.714285714 | ||
| Wright | 6.166666667 |
Iowan here–I contributed 10052 of those 94324 observations! And I’m still going through photos–only up to mid-October so far!
washington needs to step up the game! unfortunately between school and the winter weather and lack of mushrooms, January has been a pretty dead month for me iNat wise. Maybe this weekend that’ll change!
“The dominance of the Yukon ratio at the top of the “leaderboard” is almost certainly due to the efforts of previous Yukon Conservation Data Centre Coordinator Bruce Bennett in encouraging as many residents and visitors to use the app as possible.”
Goals
I’m surprised Austria is the all green country in the center, my impression living here is not many people know about inaturalist - but I may live in the wrong area? Made a map of just Austria:
Which is not enlightening at all, I assumed Vienna would be the only green place, instead it’s all red, it had only 66k obs in 2024 and at the same time most people live there. And Salzburg where my own observations go to - is somewhere in the middle.
numbers
| Wien | 2006134 | 66706 | 0.0332510191243456 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Niederösterreich | 1723981 | 168938 | 0.0979929593191572 |
| Oberösterreich | 1530571 | 26145 | 0.0170818602991955 |
| Steiermark | 1269945 | 224400 | 0.176700565772533 |
| Tirol | 776082 | 68528 | 0.0882999476859404 |
| Salzburg | 571528 | 15783 | 0.0276154449125852 |
| Kärnten | 569835 | 36980 | 0.0648959786604894 |
| Vorarlberg | 409951 | 17498 | 0.0426831499374315 |
| Burgenland | 301966 | 54789 | 0.181440956928926 |
Thanks comradejon, loustinaforest, pisum for the thread and links, I love these kinds of things!
That, plus a bit of spillover from Hamburg I guess. Myself having contributed to both effects.
There are indeed many many biases with this sort of data visualization, hence your surprise, and mine too. Not a problem really, provided we keep caveats in mind. Let’s not state the obvious (population size, natural attractiveness, observers’ self-selection etc.). I fear hyperactive naturalists visiting the country may spend more of their holidays in the Tauern mountains than at the Konzerthaus in downtown Vienna ;)
It’s interesting to compare places that seem roughly similar in population size/structure + visitors numbers + natural attractiveness. Capital city to capital city, desert county vs. desert county next to it, alpine touristic park here vs. alpine touristic park there, etc.
i suspect the City Nature Challenge helped the number of observation for Austria as a whole last year. Graz and Salzburg were the first european cities in the observation leaderboard https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/past-results
Biodiversity capital of Europe ?
It just occurred to me that one of the (many) uses of all these analyses and maps is that they can point us to where more iNat observations might be needed. I don’t have the time to pull together data for my state, but when I look at a map of Research Grade plant observations in Massachusetts, I can see that Bristol County and southern Worcester County could use some work.
Hey @elias105 - These maps are so much fun! The data you used for Austria looks solid, but there’s something weird going on with your map - not sure what happened.
On your scale, red=more, green=less (reversed from the other maps), but the actual colors for the states mostly reflect green=more. I say mostly though, because that isn’t quite right, either - according to the data, for example, Salzburg has the 2nd-least number of observations, and Burgenland has the most, but the colors aren’t reflecting that.
I messed around in Datawrapper for a bit, trying to replicate your map set-up, but still haven’t figured out what happened - haven’t managed to replicate!