Ways to use projects

General
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This is inspired by the survey that is now appearing on the website for project owners. I’d be interested in knowing how others are leveraging projects, including projects they don’t own.

Here are some of mine:

What other ways to use projects?

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I made this project to record our regular hiking routes. (Not so regular lately between the Tokai / Silvermine fire, and then winter weather) And what we can expect to see blooming in that month next year.

2 projects were made for me by @jeanphilippeb to answer my questions
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/placeholder-backup
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pre-maverick (that question is partly answered by the new Disagreements filter)
3 ways to clear the low-hanging fruit from the ID backlog.

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Interesting ideas! I use “traditional” projects to accumulate observations to answer a question or see how widespread some phenomenon is, especially about Smilax (Greenbriers). I have an umbrella of these projects at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/all-things-smilax. For the most part they are of interest only to me, but from time to time I point them out to people who’ve noticed something similar. The most popular one is https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/smilax-q2-underground, which records observations of big Smilax tubers.

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At present I only manage one project.

I set it up to assist with collecting biodiversity information for our conservation work and to help get IDs for plants and arthropods as there is very little useful information here to facilitate IDs. Having a plant list without a key to help make the ID is not so useful, so the project helps a lot.

It also allows us to sometimes track when people go into areas that are off limits to the public.

I’m a member of a bunch of other projects that I find interesting, are in areas that I’m connected to in some way, deal with issues I’m either working on or am interested in, ones that assist with IDs from scant evidence, etc.

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Currently, I’m working with two fairly simple projects.

The first is a collection of audio recordings from my state. I originally created it to compare the number and diversity of aves species recorded by photographers versus audio birders. I also use it as a quick ID module.

The second project focuses on lost and extinct bee species in my state. I occasionally check in to see if any of them have reappeared. So far, the project includes just three observations of three species since it was created—but I believe the day will come! (Sadly, Andrena bees are notoriously difficult to identify, so many of the “lost” species may never make it into the project.)

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I established the use of iNaturalist’s project feature this spring for the conservation NGO where I work. The project “Lebendige Thur” focuses on a channelized river in Switzerland, aiming to raise awareness of both remaining and missing biodiversity. The collected data directly contributes to planning connectivity measures (e.g. amphibian ponds), informs future restoration efforts, and supports political advocacy for better habitat protection.

Feedback from new users has been very positive, some now regularly visit the river to contribute observations. The approach already has proven effective, and there are plans to expand it to other river systems across Switzerland.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lebendige-thur

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They rewilded the Aarau Stadtbach near our flat when we lived there. 30 years ago. I wonder if it is still as beautiful as it was then?

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  1. I set up a project for each botany class. Student observations have to be added to the project in order to count toward a grade. This facilitates not only grading but also monitoring the project and confirming student ID’s if they’re right. (Or asking them to remove cultivated plants, if necessary.)

  2. Collect a subset of observations that show some trait that isn’t found in all similar observations. For example, Carex observations that show the perigynia (fruit) taken out of the inflorescence and shown in full. Also, rosettes of dicots. (I see other people’s projects for various animal behaviors.) I guess my Dissected Flowers project fits in this category. It is intended to provide material for teachers and it includes both cultivated and wild plants.

  3. Collection projects for taxa my colleagues and I are or were researching (by taxon or by taxon + location).

  4. Fun. I haven’t set up a purely fun project, but I enjoy those set up by others, such as “Geralds of the World” and “Blue!”.

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This is a great idea. I’m going to borrow it!

Oooo! I’m going to use this project as a reference. I also like the idea. I’ll keep it in mind as a way to help create a resource to help with identification.

By using the recordings in the project to help with other IDs? Or as a filter in the Identify module. It seems like both could be useful.

&

I would love to contribute to projects like yours. US National Parks and other agencies (USFWS, some USFS districts) have iNat projects, but I don’t see the projects I belong to being actively leveraged for any specific or educational purpose. I wonder if they are, but there just isn’t communication to the project members.

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I have two. They are identification aids, collating observations illustrating something which can’t be coded for using annotations. They are beetles with the genitalia dissected out; and European reed beetles showing their feeding marks on the food plant.

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Like others, I have a range of projects.

  • One is a big international effort to inspire and empower people to document the biodiversity of aquatic macroinvertebrates
  • I have two different kinds of projects for teaching: one that is filtered by student names to teach students about iNat and the others that are used for data analysis: Comparing Biodiversity of Tropical and Polar Regions, Three Birds of South Dakota to study habitats, and a regional one that I use to study adaptations and food webs.
  • As a City Nature Challenge Coordinator, I have all my CNC projects
  • I have one for a trip I took to Iceland.
  • A few just for fun, like the 2024 Olympics. I had a lot of fun putting this one together.
  • In the past, I’ve made a project of all my observations to make it easier to analyze statistics.

I am super curious what the findings from this survey will be. @tiwane when does the survey close? I want to ask what kinds of things project admins thought were working and what changes were suggested. I want to wait till the survey is closed so as not to bias anyone’s answers.

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I am using a range of projects purely for myself, but others would be welcome to join, of course.

For rating the rarity of moths in Europe, there are a number of projects. They are using the rarity groups “less common”, “rare” and “very rare”, corresponding to the bottom 25%, 10% and 5% of all Observations on iNaturalist. Of course, I will need to update this every 2-3 years. Observations are added automatically by the system. Example https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/rare-noctuidae-europe-bottom-10

To identify my 1st record of a species, genus, tribe, subfamily, family and class, another set of projects. I need to manually attribute this to one of my observations. Example https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/my-1st-record-of-the-genus

To group together all observations found at elevation 2,000m or above, another set of projects should help, at the moment only for the political territory of Switzerland. The >2000m maps were extracted from an official Swiss topographical website (swisstopo.admin.ch; file name “DHM25 Höhenprofil”) and rearranged using QGIS and Google maps. Projects for several taxonomic groups were created: plants, birds, major insect groups. Example https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/papilionoidea-above-2000m-in-the-swiss-alps

For easy search of what geographical areas would be in need for help with ID, referring to invertebrates only, three projects combine geographical areas which I believe would benefit from more attention: North and Cetral Asia, Africa and remote islands. The specific areas were extracted by area/observer and area/identifier considerations. I will manually update these areas once every 1-2 years. Example https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/neglected-areas-north-central-asia-invertebrata

For comparison of 3 Winters, I used projects to collect observations from my back garden. Projects are automatically collecting from the Saarland (Germany), but confined to observations made between Oct 1st to March 31st only. Example https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/winter-insects-saarland-2023-24

For help with both searching and identification, I made a group “Microlepidoptera” which combines the numerous families of Lepidoptera considered micro lepidoptera, world wide. This helps, because “micro lepidoptera” is not a valid taxon, but rather a practical term introduced by butterfly collectors two centuries ago. See https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/microlepidoptera Similar projects for “wainscots” and “small black day flying high Alpine moths”, but these only for use in Europe. Another one for “Erebidae, fat & small” for use in Latin America only.

I hope, this selection of projects can inspire the one or the other. Please PM me if you wanted to join or ask questions.

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My favourite projects are for niche situations or types of observations:

I also appreciate projects for particular groups of organisms, whether filters for non-taxonomic groups or for taxonomic groups for a particular area.

The projects I use most are definitely the leafmine, gall, and plant disease projects, since identifiers of those use those projects to find observations.

I also usually create a project when I travel for vacation to collect my observations together, and hopefully also share results with other friends who iNatted on the trip. And for a couple of my favourite places to iNat.

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As a filter: I go to my project (which has both taxon and location set), click on “Observations” or “All Observations” – or whatever it’s called – and from there, just like with any other /observations page, I switch to the ID page via the filter dropdown.

That lets me jump from the project that collects what I want to ID to my project’s ID module view.

Downside: I always have to manually add per_page=200 and set sort to random. Still, it’s often quicker than digging through my browser bookmarks. my ID module list is kinda massive :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: