Join other iNatters at District Brew Yards on Tuesday, April 30th (6PM to 8PM).

Folks will get a quick tutorial on how to use the great iNaturalist app and website, and then hang out enjoying the local brew while identifying observations that occurred over the past weekend.

District Brew Yards
417 N Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL (view map)

Bring your own laptop or device to work on!

Organized by Illinois Science Council. You can let 'em know you're coming at https://ISCandCNC.eventbrite.com.

See full event details on the CNC Chicago Wilderness webpage.

All event times are local time.

Join the project to stay in the loop: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-chicagoland-region/join

Illinois Science Council is hosting an Identification Social after this year's City Nature Challenge. We'll gather at Metropolitan Brewery, get a quick tutorial on how to use iNaturalist, and then hang out enjoying the local brew while marking observations that occurred over the past weekend.

Bring your own laptop or device to work on!

Metropolitan is family and dog friendly, with gluten-free and NA options.

Tuesday, May 2nd
6PM-8PM (Central)
Metropolitan Brewing
3057 North Rockwell Street, Chicago, IL (view map)

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/id-the-birds-bees-with-isc-city-nature-challenge-tickets-537806773537

Help organize locally for the City Nature Challenge 2023: Chicago Region. The observation dates for next year's challenge are April 28th through May 1st, 2023. Save the dates!

Our first regional organizers planning meeting will be:
Tuesday, December 6th, 2022 at 10AM Central
via Zoom

To join that meeting and/or be added to our regional organizers email list, add your contact info to this form and we will send you the meeting link.

Other links:

• Regional CNC website: https://www.chicagowilderness.org/citynaturechallenge
• CNC 2022 Chicago Metro project summary
• Other Chicago Metro journal posts from 2022

Thinking of planning an event?
If you or your organization is thinking about holding a related event before, during, or soon after the City Nature Challenge in the Chicago Metro area, we will be collecting all events and displaying them on our regional hub. Example events include:

• bioblitz
• guided nature hikes
• iNaturalist workshops/trainings (e.g. for beginners, how to add IDs, educator-focused, or advanced iNat usage)
• virtual identification party or nature storytelling
• sharing how your organization or research uses iNat data
• learning about urban flora and fauna through iNat or Seek
• urban nature trivia Zoom

(in progress)

(Morus microphylla not yet included here)
(are there other spp in Mexico?)
what else?

Sources:

• http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=121220
• http://bluegrasswoodland.com/uploads/Muddled_Mulberries_in_Kentucky.pdf
• Weakley, Alan S. 2022. Flora of the Southeastern United States, University of North Carolina Herbarium, North Carolina Botanical Garden, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Wilhelm & Rericha. 2017. Flora of the Chicago Region. Indiana Academy of Science.

As of 19 June 2022 there are about 2,750 obs (2,100 Needs ID, 200 RG) of Morus nigra in North America on iNat, most of which are misidentified Morus alba. You can help out with ID here!

If you live in the Chicago area and don't have a copy of Flora of the Chicago Region, or know someone who would greatly benefit from receiving a copy of this hefty book, please nominate yourself or that person to receive a copy here: http://illinoisplants.org/flora-giveaway/

More info at the link above but here are the nomination guidelines:

1. Nominating yourself is encouraged! You can also nominate someone else.
2. Nominee’s primary residence must be within the Chicago Region – see map above and county list: Illinois (Boone, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kankakee, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Will), Indiana (Jasper, Lake, LaPorte, Newton, Porter, St. Joseph, Starke), Michigan (Berrien), Wisconsin (Kenosha, Racine, Walworth).
3. Nominee should not already have a copy of the Flora of the Chicago Region and should demonstrate how they need/will benefit from receiving a complimentary copy.
4. Nominations are due May 31st, 2022 (at midnight Central time).

thanks for helping spread the word!

Native plant conservation and research is severely underfunded. One report showed despite comprising 57% of federally Threatened and Endangered species, they got less than 4% of the federal funding.

If you love plants, call and email your representatives. Ask them to support increased funding for native plant conservation. Then consider donating to these organizations.

This is a time-sensitive fundraiser to protect an extremely rare ecosystem: Save Bell Bowl Prairie. An airport access road is planned to be built right through it, but there is a legal effort to alter the plan and protect its many rare plants:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/kt3ne-save-bell-bowl-prairie

Annotation and illustration by Liz Anna Kozik, learn more at https://www.savebellbowlprairie.org/

Look for a native plant society near you. The research and monitoring programs through the Illinois Native Plant Society have been expanding in recent years. Since INPS is completely volunteer-led, donations to the grant programs goes right to scientists here in Illinois to study our native plants and ecosystems with no overhead:
https://illinoisplants.org/about-membership/

Find a "Friends of [local nature park system]" near you. Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves is a pretty new organization with teams of volunteers working to protect and restore the highest quality native ecosystems throughout the state:
https://friendsofillinoisnaturepreserves.org/

And, of course, iNaturalist! Our observations help land managers and researchers learn more about ALL life. I've seen iNat data used in quite a few papers and reports. For example, the consultants tasked with assessing the threat of construction activities to the Bell Bowl Prairie's threatened/endangered species included iNaturalist in their list of resources to assess. What we share here has a real impact. But server space isn't free and community support is needed:
https://donorbox.org/inaturalist-community-fundraising/fundraiser/cassi-saari

Who am I missing? Please share your favorite native plant conservation or research organizations that are doing good work, and how best to support them.

Associated tweet: https://twitter.com/BOUCUR/status/1476229145734623238

Prairie dandelion, Nothocalais cuspidata at Bell Bowl Prairie, observed by @edwardcope

See what's going on, and how you can help, whether you're in Illinois or somewhere else:

http://www.cassisaari.com/remnant-prairie-under-threat-bell-bowl-prairie/

Next week Edward Warden (@ewarden) and I, with help from Taran Lichtenberger (@taran09), Kristin Brock, and Laura Reilly (@lauraxreilly), will doing a quick presentation on iNaturalist and the City Nature Challenge. If you're reading this here, you might not be the intended audience, but perhaps you can help spread the word?

Here's the link to register: https://www.chicagowilderness.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1464964

It's not strictly Chicago-specific, so feel free to share more broadly.

thanks! :)
cassi / @bouteloua

--

iNaturalist and the City Nature Challenge

Chicago Wilderness Cafe - over Zoom! register here
Thursday, February 4th
12PM - 1PM

First, learn about iNaturalist, a community science website, app, and network of people making observations of flora and fauna across the world. Learn how amateurs and professionals alike are sharing their nature observations, getting help with species identification, and using the iNaturalist platform for conservation planning, land management, nature education, monitoring, and research.

Second, see how you or your organization can participate in the City Nature Challenge (CNC) an annual, friendly, bioblitz-style competition between urban areas all around the world, taking place between April 30th and May 3rd, 2021. It began in 2016 between just Los Angeles and San Francisco and has since expanded worldwide, with hundreds of cites expected to participate in 2021. The Challenge aims to engage city residents and visitors in learning about their local nature and to help all of us better understand urban biodiversity. Anyone can take part on their own, assist others with identification, or even organize a bioblitz at a nearby park.

Presenters & Moderators:

• cassi saari, Project Manager - Natural Areas, Chicago Park District and President, Northeast Chapter of the Illinois Native Plant Society
• Edward Warden: Conservation Stewardship Coordinator-Shedd Aquarium and President-Chicago Ornithological Society
• Kristin Brock, Chicago Park District Outdoor & Environmental Education Manager
• Taran Lichtenberger, Chicago Botanic Garden, Project Budburst

Help Identify!

"Unknown" observations don't have any identification label at all. Many people helping identify observations on iNaturalist will filter the observations by the group of species they know how to ID (like "plants" or "insects"), so observations with no ID at all yet will be excluded from those filtered searches. Putting in a general ID helps funnel the observation to someone who might know what they're looking at so that it can get identified more quickly.

Baseline stats:

61,809 observations in the Great Lakes region without an ID

And state/province by state/province:

• Minnesota: 3787 observations (0.81% of all observations) — help identify
• Wisconsin: 5050 observations (1.4% of all observations) — help identify
• Illinois: 7622 observations (1.13% of all observations) — help identify
• Michigan: 7486 observations (1.5% of all observations) — help identify
• Indiana: 4672 observations (1.69% of all observations) — help identify
• Ohio: 11396 observations (1.18% of all observations) — help identify
• Pennsylvania: 3752 observations (0.46% of all observations) — help identify
• New York: 6439 observations (0.53% of all observations) — help identify
• Ontario: 11605 observations (0.61% of all observations) — help identify

Let's see how low we can get these numbers by the end of October!

View a quick tutorial on how to efficiently use the Identify page here.

*Tallying observations posted to iNat before Sept 30th, 2020.

Questions:

Why the Great Lakes region?
It's where I find most interesting. :) And...I don't feel like tallying stats for more places. Though someone could probably write some simple code to tally these automatically for a bunch of places at a time, like every state or every country!

Do I have to know anything about how to identify stuff in this region?
No! Even a basic identification, like "frog", "mammal", or "flowering plant" will help other identifiers find these observations better.

I want to hang out and chitchat with other iNatters while I'm IDing unknowns. Where can I do that?
Check out the main iNaturalist Discord server or the Great Lakes Botany server.

Someone said something snarky, like "duh" or "obviously, but I want to know which species" when I added a coarse ID to their observation - what should I do?
These people usually don't understand yet how identifications work on iNaturalist. Sometimes it's best to just not respond at all, but one option is to use or modify the commonly used response for this situation. There are several listed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses#addid You might even consider using some boilerplate text as you are adding IDs with some quick copy/pasting. If it was a really inappropriate comment (check the Community Guidelines), always feel comfortable flagging the comment so a curator or iNat staff can take a look.

Wait, but some of these are your observations...
Hey, that's not a question. And, sorry.

Why do some species show up in the stats as unknowns?
They're waiting to be grafted by a curator/staff, or it's an unknown bug! Yay!

Help Identify!