Dear Participants -
I have a dream to reduce the number of unidentified, non-research grade observations in the San Mateo County Bio-Blitz project. As of this writing, there are over 26,000 of our 85,000 observations that are not at research grade. Some of these will never be identifiable to species, but many can be. I've been spending some time in the deep recesses of our project, and here's what I've noted.
There are MANY identifiable forms, especially in plants and inter-tidal critters. I just lack the expertise to identify them. There are sizable numbers of butterflies, insects, mushrooms, odes, and lichens that, if not identifiable to species, can at least be located to family. As to be expected, most birds are taken care of already. But surprisingly, mammals are not as well-covered.
I am not asking everyone to spend hours IDing. But if each person would take thirty minutes to search for their speciality species and families, it would be a great help. There is a LOT of low-hanging fruit to be identified. For instance, I don't know many plants, but I went in and cleaned up Scarlet Pimpernel and Miner's Lettuce!
If you have not already done this, it is easy to generate a page that brings up all entries in need of identification. Here's the process. Come here to the San Mateo County Bio-Blitz. Click on "Observations from the left-hand column under "Stats." When the observation page comes up, go to the address bar on your browser. The address should read
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=799&place_id=any&verifiable=any&captive=any
Now, go to this address and between the word "observations" and the question mark, insert the word "identify" - as in this address
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=799&place_id=any&verifiable=any&captive=any
This page will now work the same way as the general "Identification" page for all iNat sightings that you can access from the top bar menu.
Once you've advanced the first page of entries in need of IDing, you can jump to later points by fiddling with the page marker.
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?verifiable=any&page=5&project_id=799&captive=any
Here, where the address reads "page=5" you can go into the address bar and change the page number to where you want to go. I've found this feature to sometimes be buggy, toggling between page 1 and the requested page. If you are persistent, though, the program most often calms down and lets you do what you need to do.
Each page generated contains 30 entires to be identified. We currently have 882 pages. If we could work that down to 750 pages, I'd be thrilled! Frankly, if we all chip in, it'll be done in a snap!
I'm going to invite people who have known expertise or lots of entries here. Thanks for anything you can do!