I have also seen it used to log examples of garbage left behind at a site. That data could be used to improve outreach or policies at a particular park or site in order to help reduce such incidents. So long as it is marked as Human, and ideally, a note is made to indicate why they are posting it, that seems a reasonable use of iNat.
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I agree. Human records are very useful for this sort of thing!
Link them with a journal post or some kind of project and you have a great way to document pollution/habitat destruction.
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For what itâs worth, I know of a frequent user of iNat who has used the âhumanâ observation to indicate the location of things like personally-placed camera traps.
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There might also be cases where something is submitted as an observation of a wild animal, and someone might want to correct that and say it was a human artifact. Like, for example, someone might tag a hole in the ground as being a snake den, and someone might contradict that by saying it was created by a human.
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As others have said it highlights the fact that humans are animals and not apart from the natural world. (Iâm still angry the Handbook of the mammals of the world, which supposedly collects every single mammal species on earth, does not include the most widespread and ubiquitous mammal in the world)
I also like my lists to be complete, I like that in my garden projects if I generate a species list the most defining species of that habitat is not excluded.
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They should all automatically be marked âCaptive/CultivatedââŚ
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Iâve reported âHumanâ for a human who was on private property past several âNo trespassingâ signs (and his little dog). I consider this to be of note. A human in a public space, or a human on their own property may not be significant, but a human who is not in their âdomainâ I think is. It is also a seasonal issue, which I like to track. And I argue against marking as âCaptive/Cultivatedâ as these trespassers are not captive nor cultivated on private property.
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Two times I have submitted observations of humans: one was motorcycle tracks way off road up very steep loose scree, another was what looked like a cannabis farm way off in the bush with lots of garbage left behind. It was a way to document unexpected (really?) impactful human activity.
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I agree that human activity is not the main focus of iNaturalist⌠but if youâre managing and reporting on the environmental condition of a site or sites then it is useful to have the option to record it, whether it is negative (e.g. illegal trapping, illegal firewood collection) or positive (e.g. nestbox installation and maintenance).
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I feel thatâs a good use case, but I think Iâd be remiss if I also didnât point out that there is also another app/site combo dedicated to crowdsourced reporting of litter that someone mentioned in a previous thread: litterati.org
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Thereâs already lots of good answers here but I just want to add one that hasnât been emphasised much: there are observations of Homo sapiens because if such observations were not possible, then it would be the only recognised extant species in the entire tree of life to be deliberately removed from iNatâs taxonomy.
Even aside from all of the excellent reasons why human observations can be valid and useful, what would actually happen in the taxonomy if they were not allowed? Would Homo sapiens still be present as a taxon but inexplicably not permitted as an identification? Would there be a glaring missing genus under Homininae? Making human observations as casual by default is a much better way to deal with the human âproblemâ within iNatâs existing systems of data classification.
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So Iâm fairly new to iNaturalist, and although Iâm unfamiliar with the overarching discussion regarding âHumanâ observations, Iâve seen enough of the âspamâ pictures like selfies and random objects to at least be aware of the issue.
The way I see it, I always thought the purpose of âHumanâ observations were for identifying traces of human activity in nature, such as artificial objects in the woods, or some sort of byproduct like feces, or a chopped-down tree. Posting a selfie is, to me at least, directly counterintuitive to the mission of iNaturalist, which, again IMO, emphasizes exploration and discovery. There always seemed to be a sort of âloggingâ element to this site; like, youâd never know this mallard duck or this turtle or this plant was there unless you took a picture of it and posted it. Thereâs something to be learned from the pictures; I post to iNaturalist with the knowledge that a scientist might use it for data collection purposes. Therefore, while posting a chopped-down tree, or a pitched, abandoned tent in the forest would count, merely posting a selfie or some random object in whatâs clearly a backyard would not.
Example, just last night I flagged a picture of a deck chair in a backyard that a European member called a âgray ratsnake.â A mod later resolved it and gave it the âHumanâ ID. I saw that and I was like âBruh.â I feel thereâs nothing useful to be gathered from a chair in a backyard, just like thereâs nothing useful to be gathered from a selfie or anything like it. iNaturalist should be a welcoming community where people can have useful discussions and have fun, but I also feel what we post as observations should have some scientific value as iNaturalist is first and foremost a science tool.
All this is just what I feel, though, I know Iâm not qualified to speak of iNaturalist as if I know whatâs truly best for it.
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Youâre right that a photo of a deckchair doesnât provide any scientifically-useful data. Thereâs already a way to deal with such observations: the âcasualâ classification. A âHumanâ observation will never be classed as research grade, so it will never be sent to other data collections or used for science. Giving a human ID to a useless observation like a deckchair is the way to deal with the fact itâs useless. It gets automatically classed as casual, removed from most views and searches, but while still fitting into the system of being identified by evidence of an organism (a human).
If identifying as human wasnât possible at all, then instead of anyone being able to mark an observation human to remove it from the pool, the onus would entirely be on staff to manually remove every single such observation to prevent them cluttering the site, which is completely impractical.
iNaturalist is first and foremost a science tool
This is not the case. iNaturalist is first and foremost a way to encourage people to engage with nature:
our primary goal in operating iNaturalist is to connect people to nature
Posting selfies or other test observations might not immediately seem to meet this goal. But if an observation gets identified as âHumanâ, the person can get an idea of how the ID process works, see that Homo sapiens fits into the same taxonomy as everything else, and if someone adds a helpful comment hopefully understand that wild organisms are a better target for observations. If such an observation just gets deleted for being unacceptable, a new user is far more likely to give up on iNat completely, which definitely doesnât help them connect with nature.
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This statement seems to suggest that Casual observations canât provide scientifically-useful data, which is not true.
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community.
just a few examples: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d1=2015-01-01&d2=2015-12-31&place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=43584&user_id=connlindajo&verifiable=any
and then there are these (if wonder if thereâs a project for these kinds of observations?):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7071652
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/25215
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Youâre right, and that isnât what I meant to suggest but I could have been clearer. All scientifically-useless observations are(/should be) casual, not all casual observations are scientifically useless.
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Thatâs a slippery slope to go down. Who decides what is or has scientific value? Does the next Mallard, or Monarch or Grey Heron etc record that will be submitted have âscientific valueâ?
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I find this argument absurd and self-serving. If you want to show off your art, there are plenty of places online to do that.
Imagine if everyone starting posting pictures their kids drew of a flower and identifying them to species? Or maybe my childâs dinosaur drawings have a place on iNat?
This sort of stuff just clutters up a citizen science database and pollutes the dataset.
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iNat is to encourage people who are not scientists to become aware of nature.
It is not defined as a (polluted) âcitizen science databaseâ
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Thatâs a slippery slope to go down. Who decides what is or has scientific value? Does the next Mallard, or Monarch or Grey Heron etc record that will be submitted have âscientific valueâ?
It seems like youâre interpreting my phrase out of context! I was responding to someone who said that an observation of a deck chair shouldnât be identified as Homo sapiens because it doesnât provide any scientifically-useful data. Iâm not making any comment about the grey areas of whatâs scientifically useful, or how and why thatâs defined. My only point is that the casual classification exists in part as a place for observations of deck chairs to end up.
Of course a mallard or grey heron observation can be scientifically useful, because it contains scientific data. If it has a date and location and gets identified then it can be classed as research grade, which is as it should be. That has nothing to do with the original topic: observations which some people consider useless to inat because they contain only evidence of humans.
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