Why hasn't iNaturalist enabled Antarctica as a searchable location?

[pandahead_hoimoon]

I’ve actually added major locations in Antarctica (though they are limited to the coastal areas). While the geographic boundaries aren’t perfectly accurate, they at least cover the entire coastline of the continent. I’ve also created a project called “Biodiversity of Antarctica”：

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-antarctica

The project allows users to check records from Antarctica, I find it much less convenient than a direct search. However, searching for Antarctica directly on iNaturalist currently yields no results.

As an outsider, I’m really curious: is this restriction on browser searches due to the sensitivity of the data?

Relevent locations I’ve added：

Adelie Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204153

​Alexander Island：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221864​

Amundsen Sea： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221994

Astronaut Sea: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221992

Bellingsha Usen Sea: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221932

Coats Land: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204119

Davis Sea: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/davis-sea

​Dumont d’Urville Sea： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222047

Edward VII Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204120

Ellsworth Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204066

Enderby Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221863

Filchner Through： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222191

George V Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222190

Graham Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222417

Haakon VII Sea： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221993

Hughes Through： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222192

Kemp Land： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222063

King Edward VIII Bay： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222134

Larsen Ice Shelf： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222383

Lazarev Sea： https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222379

Mac. Robertson Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221866

Marie Byrd Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204069

Oates Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204240

Palmer Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204239

Princess Elizabeth Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222064

Prydz Bay：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222135

Queen Mary Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222133

Queen Maud Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204152

Ronne Ice Shelf：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204154

Ronne Through：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222380

Ross Sea：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221934

Somov Sea：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222045

Victoria Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204067

Weddell Sea：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/221933

Wilhelm II Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/222065

Wilkes Land：https://www.inaturalist.org/places/204121

​

[ASJ-2022]

Just an aside question. I see species that are not actually on Antartica proper, but are subantartic, in the project. Should the project name reflect that?

Oh, ok, I see the project requirements note those inclusions.

[pandahead_hoimoon]

Actually, this project targets the broader Antarctic region. It’s not strictly limited to Antarctica proper, but also includes some subantarctic island groups and parts of the Southern Ocean.

[DianaStuder]

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/strangeness-when-trying-to-use-antarctica-places/14038

Not finding anything else - text added in case the system whines at me – too short

[timo27]

just spitballing here, but maybe it is a technical limitation in how iNat handles/stores location boundaries. From a 3D Globe perspective, there’s nothing wrong with outlining the continent of Antarctica, however, since iNat’s map is 2D, the boundry would no longer be a closed shape but instead a single line.

[timo27]

I can’t confirm this, but after a little bit of googling, it appears that filled polygons cannot enclose the poles in KML files, which is the datatype that iNat reads for place boundries.

[astra_the_dragon]

I wonder if it would really be so difficult to make an official KML that includes as much as possible without hitting the poles / other glitchy areas. Surely it would be better than nothing, and the data inaccuracy would be negligible.

[tiwane]

I’m pretty sure this is the reason, though I’d have to double-check.

[paul_dennehy]

You certainly get some bizarre accuracy “circles” when the circle intersects the south pole. Not sure how close you can get to the poles in a KML file before things get weird though…

[vladimir_fuka]

2D is not a problem, all maps are 2D. But geographic projections often project some points or lines to infinity and the chosen web Mercator projection it is the poles.

Also, all parallels in this case are not closed lines if treated like that. However, that is not an untreatable problem. The software could treat the periodicity in the zonal direction if programmed to do that.

[chris_earle]

Not entirely clear about the question. When I search for “Life” in “Antarctica” I get a nice map display showing all the observations in the continent. I do note that iNat doesn’t have imagery for locations S of -85 degrees, but it will still provide a map that goes down to -89 degrees, which seems pretty good since the current southernmost observation is N of -82 degrees.

[wy_bio]

I’m a software developer with a GIS certificate. I have the iNaturalist Rails app running locally on my computer.

KMZ is the format that iNaturalist allows users to import place boundaries. KMZ is not the only format that developers can use to import place boundaries into the iNaturalist database. For example, in the instructions to set up the iNaturalist Rails app, developers are told to use a script to download various shapefiles, and import the data to the places and places_geometries tables in the database.

In order to add Antarctica to the iNaturalist places, an iNat developer could import boundaries for Antarctica into the database using a shape file.

iNaturalist uses Mercator projection for the map on the website. Here’s an example of adding Antarctica to a map that uses Mercator projection. Antarctica is in gray, the basemap is Open Street Map.

You can use rectangular bounding box to select observations in an area near Antarctica. This bounding box uses 180 to -180 longitude, and -58 to -89 latitude. There are over 38K observations.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=-58&nelng=180&subview=map&swlat=-89&swlng=-180

Since the other 6 continents are available as iNaturalist places, and Antarctica area has 38k observations, I think Antarctica should also be available as an iNaturalist place.

[tiwane]

I’m not a developer, but we only accept KML files when making or editing places, not KMZ files. Is what you’re describing different?

[wy_bio]

KMZ is a typo. I meant KML.

The idea that iNaturalist can’t have Antartica as a searchable place because of KML files is not totally correct. The script that import places for the iNat Rails app, imports Antartica into the database. I imported a few observations from Antartica into my local copy of the iNat website. Here’s a screenshot of a search for Antartica on my computer.

Here’s a screenshot of the map with the observation viewer removed to give a clearer view of Antartica.

In order to add Antartica as a searchable place, an iNat developer can import Antartica from a file that supports polar geometry such as shapefile, GeoJSON, etc.