City Nature Challenge: SF vs LA!

The California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County have issued a challenge: who can document the most biodiversity in one week, the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles County?

Centered around the first-ever National Citizen Science Day and Earth Day, these museums are spearheading the effort to get San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County residents and visitors to document as many species as possible using iNaturalist: the City Nature Challenge: S.F. vs L.A.! It all starts at noon on Thursday, April 14 and runs through noon on Thursday, April 21. Not only will these observations help build up the baseline of California biodiversity, but it also provides data for our local scientists, land managers, and governments about the areas they study and care for. On Earth Day, Friday, April 22, the stats will be compared. Who will come out on top? Which city will have the most species found, the most observations, the most citizen scientists involved: Los Angeles or San Francisco?

<img src="http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o138/jupitergo/0392b695-f12d-4643-9cd6-884f800f709b_zpsaqrx1yhl.jpg"

The California Academy of Sciences firmly believes that the Bay Area will win this competition! We have amazingly diverse wildlife from the shores of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay to the peaks of Mt. Diablo and Mt. Tamalpais; we have incredible city, county, state, and national parks; and we are an environmentally-minded and dedicated populace.

So what can you do to help the San Francisco Bay Area win this challenge?

We're reaching out to you, the Bay Area iNatters, to help us #BeatLA! Make as many observations as you can in our nine Bay Area Counties, help ID observations coming in, organize an event or get-together where people can make iNat observations (and add that event in the comments below!), come to our McLaren Bioblitz on April 16, spread the word, tag other Bay Area iNaturalist users in the comments!

Starting at noon on April 14 until noon on April 21, all observations made in the Bay Area will aggregate here: City Nature Challenge: S.F. vs L.A.


@hfabian @dpom @robberfly @anudibranchmom @damontighe @tiwane @direbecca @avocat @loarie @cae1 @kueda @jmaughn @sea-kangaroo @kevinhintsa @gyrrlfalcon @evelynch @nelruzam @richardwasson @marionanthonisen @leftcoastnaturalist @metsa @bluebird101 @dgreenberger @philwarren @th0th @mrchasse @lgottlieb @molly_l @ashley_w @alexshepard @jennifer_w @laceypantalones @paloma @protecthabitat @libbiwu @dave-barry @rudyard @bjoelle @leslie_flint @ross2 @wendy_h @eric_h @icosahedron @james35 @wbsimey @prakrit @amybird @boschniakia @laurahersz @acollins @damontighe @eddiebug @biosam @leptonia @invertboy @rebeccafay @adrained @cdbrewer @pbrastow @gunarson @raulagrait @rademacherdan @folini @joelle @constance @greenrosettas @tbschwarz @ajwacaser @papiliogal @heathermarie

Posted on 24 de março de 2016, 09:33 PM by kestrel kestrel

Comentários

Haha, awesome idea!

Los Angeles: it's on.

Publicado por sea-kangaroo cerca de 8 anos antes

I'm in. Interesting though I am and always have been a Bay Area human, I root for the LA sports teams, ie: LA Dodgers, Lakers, Kings and now again LA RAMS! But in this instance I join my fellow Bay Area humans in chanting Beat LA !! Ha ha.

Publicado por wild-by-nature-db cerca de 8 anos antes

Game on. 🙃

Publicado por metsa cerca de 8 anos antes

Love it! @lhiggins - hope the LA iNatters are ready for the power of the Bay Area iNat force! :)

Publicado por kestrel cerca de 8 anos antes

What's the 'bay area' for the purposes of this project? Which nine counties?

Publicado por icosahedron cerca de 8 anos antes

From the project map looks like all of the counties that touch the SF Bay, which encompasses a lot of area that doesn't seem like "bay area" to me but w/e. Sonoma, Napa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, Alameda, Solano.

Publicado por sea-kangaroo cerca de 8 anos antes

Yep, all the counties that touch SF Bay, all nine of them! (We didn't want to have to arbitrarily cut counties in half.) So it's about 7000 square miles compared to Los Angeles County's 4750 square miles, but they have more people who could potentially be making observations - LA County has ~10 million residents, the SF Bay Area has ~7 million.

Publicado por kestrel cerca de 8 anos antes

Sounds great!

Publicado por hfabian cerca de 8 anos antes

SF Bay is going to completely destroy LA. Just sayin'.

Publicado por naturalisttrent cerca de 8 anos antes

We'll all will in the end. Can't wait to see what gets posted!

Publicado por hfabian cerca de 8 anos antes

Sweet. I'm in.

Publicado por evelynch quase 8 anos antes

Hey there Bay Area power iNat users! I've heard that the LA power-iNatters have been organizing themselves in an effort to beat the Bay Area, so here's a reminder/push to get out and make observations starting tomorrow at noon, until noon on Thursday, April 21!

The counties that are part of the challenge are:
Marin / Sonoma / Napa / Solano / Contra Costa / Alameda / Santa Clara / San Mateo / San Francisco

Other events you are welcome to join:

Friday, April 15: @rebeccafay and I are taking ~20 middle school students to Pillar Point reef on Friday, April 15, meeting at 11:30 am to tidepool & make iNaturalist observations. You're welcome to join us to lend some iNat expertise to the students and to make a bunch of rocky intertidal observations! After the students leave, we'll also go check out what's living on the docks in the harbor. Just send one of us a message if you'd like to join us!

Saturday, April 16: McLaren Bioblitz, 10 am - 2 pm (optional birding starting at 7 am), in San Francisco! http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/mclaren-park-bioblitz-2016

Saturday, April 16: Slide Ranch is also hosting a bioblitz Saturday afternoon if the Marin Coast is more your thing! 2:30-5pm, email admin@slideranch.org to RSVP!

Feel free to post in the comments if you have other excursions planned where other Bay Area power-iNatters could join you!

Publicado por kestrel quase 8 anos antes

About 9 hours into the competition and we're squarely beating LA right now! Keep it up!

Here's the LA project if you're interested: http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-l-a-vs-s-f

Publicado por kestrel quase 8 anos antes

You guys, LA is staging a pretty major comeback! While we used to lead by over 2000 observations, they've slowly been chipping away at that and now they're less than 500 observations and less than 100 species behind us.

The challenge ends tomorrow at noon, so if you have any chance to get out and make some observations before then, please do!

Or you can help by providing some more refined IDs for observations we already have - this would likely increase our species count: http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=6345&quality_grade=needs_id

Let's make sure we #BeatLA!

Publicado por kestrel quase 8 anos antes

So how did this turn out? I was poking around reading various journals and I have to know who won and what were the totals.

Publicado por vermfly mais de 7 anos antes

@vermfly Well, when we officially pulled the stats the day the challenge ended, LA won in observations, species, and people. But since people could still upload their observations after the challenge was over (assuming they were made during the challenge timeframe), it's basically turned out to be an almost exact tie!

SF:
observations = 10560
species = 1677
people = 554
http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-s-f-vs-l-a

LA:
observations = 10816
species = 1669
people = 424 + 150 or so who sent their photos in via social media or email
http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-l-a-vs-s-f

Publicado por kestrel mais de 7 anos antes

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