2024 City Nature Challenge Results

Good afternoon CNC participants,

It's been one week since the CNC results were announced! I've been meaning to write up a post analyzing how we did this year but haven't had the time. The following link has a journal post from the official City Nature Challenge umbrella project for North and South America:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-north-and-south-america/journal/94033-cnc-2024-results

You can also read this great write up about the 2024 City Nature Challenge: https://www.calacademy.org/press/releases/city-nature-challenge-records-24-million-wildlife-observations-from-more-than-83000

Numbers from all 690 participating cities/locations:
https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/current-results

We finished in 7th place overall for species count, 16th place for observation count and 24th place for the number of participants. That's out of 690 cities around the world!

We improved on our species count by almost 400 species and observation count by over 6,000 observations but dropped by over 200 observers compared to last year. I am planning on putting together a short video to compare our results with previous years, but you can also use this link to see all of the South Florida CNC projects over the years:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-south-florida-2017-2024

Many organizations were involved with making this year's CNC a success by hosting events. I think I got all of them but if I missed one, please comment below so we can recognize them for putting in the time to put an event together!
Anne Kolb Nature Center
Blowing Rocks Preserve
Broward County
City of Boca Raton
City of West Palm Beach
City of Wilton Manors
Environmentally Endangered Lands
Everglades National Park
Florida Atlantic University
Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
Frost Science
Historic Virginia Key Beach Park Trust
Institute for Regional Conservation
John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park
Miami Eco Adventures
Miami-Dade Parks & Recreation
Moraes of South Florida
Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Resources Management
University of Florida- IFAS

Many individuals also put in a great effort to make the CNC happen this year and I want to particularly highlight @jimw3 and his Documenting Biodiversity Course at FAU, which he offered for the first time ever this year after being inspired by how well we did in the City Nature Challenge last year. His students and him together posted 7,461 observations, over 25% of our total observations! That's right, one single class and professor were responsible for a quarter of all observations posted for South Florida!! His top student, @maycla25, joined iNaturalist on January 10th and has already observation 528 different species, 309 of which were during this year's CNC!

Our top identifiers so far are @phil333 with 5.2k identifications, @jimw3 with 4.7k identifications, @oliver_g_jones with 1.9k and @kyle481 with 1.4k identifications! We still have many observations that need to be identified but we will get through them surely but surely...

Hope you enjoyed participating and again, I will probably add one more journal post soon to look through some of our observations. If you noticed any particularly impressive or interesting observations from our CNC, please share a link or two or more as a comment!

By the way, here is next year's CNCSOFLO project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2025-south-florida-cncsoflo
You can search for it via the app by typing in "CNCSOFLO 2025"

Never too early to join and start preparing... remember citizen science is all about observing biodiversity year-round, not just during 4 days in spring! So keep your eyes peeled and keep those observations coming :-)

Joe MDO & the CNCSOFLO Team

Publicado el mayo 13, 2024 07:17 TARDE por joemdo