Managing Your Personal Observations

As you continue to add observations to iNaturalist, it’s very helpful to periodically review and edit your past observations. Why? Well, as time passes following the observation, we forget the fine details regarding the location, time of day, animal behavior, and all the other features not captured in the photo. Ideally, we should include all the fine details when first adding a new observation, but in reality many of us don’t have the time, especially if we’re adding numerous observations in one sitting! Those things are important to your experience as the lucky observer, but also to everyone interested in those details or hopes to use that observation for research. With winter coming, managing your personal observations is a good way to relive your outdoor adventures on a cold winter day!

Here are a few things to look for when reviewing and editing your personal observations:

SPECIES NAME. If you agree with the suggestions made for your observation (whether they disagree with your original ID or they’re responding to your request for assistance), be sure to select the ‘agree’ link. Also, remove an observation from the ‘ID Please’ list if you agree with the suggestions you received. Failing to do so will keep that yellow ‘ID Please’ tag on your observation.

TIME. To be fair, iNaturalist doesn’t have a unique window just for time, so we rarely include it in an observation. Time might be a tough thing to remember of a past observation, but a digital time stamp or trail camera caption are easy sources for that information.

ACCURACY LEVEL. You may have selected the exact location of your observation on the map, but the accuracy level hasn’t been edited to reflect your confidence in that location. iNaturalist has its own way of trying to access accuracy (it does so by considering how zoomed in you are on the Google Map window before selecting the location), but that can be very far off. For example, if you know the location of a bridge where you recorded skunk tracks, your accuracy level should not be greater than the width of the bridge, right? But if you selected that bridge while the map was zoomed out to a city-wide scale, your accuracy level might be >2000 meters! You might also have a wildly high accuracy value if you used your phone app and the GPS was performing poorly. My phone is notorious for doing that!

You can manually insert an accuracy value or grow/shrink the accuracy buffer (i.e. red circle) around your location. To a researcher, the accuracy of an observation location is often exceedingly more valuable than the quality of the photo!

GEOPRIVACY LEVEL. You may be inclined to increase or decrease your geoprivacy level for observations. Concerned about an animal being harassed or revealing the location of your favorite birding spot, trail camera, or home? Then increase the geoprivacy. Not concerned about revealing the location of a plant or animal that’s found everywhere? Consider decreasing the geoprivacy.

DESCRIPTION. Have a story to go along with the observation? The description window is where you can add the story and as many details as possible. Did you have a chance encounter with a critter and weren’t able to get a photo? Here’s where you can describe what you saw to establish credibility for the sighting.

ALSO examine the unique fields for the various projects you contribute to. In the DFW Carnivores project these fields include:

DETECTION TYPE.
Examine your observation to see if you have selected the appropriate option from the dropdown list. For example, if you saw a dead animal, the selection should be ‘bones/carcass’ and not ‘visual’, the option designated for observing a live animal.

TRAIL CAMERA TYPE.
This optional field is for iNaturalists to share the brand and model of the trail camera (also known as a game camera) that took the photo, and hopefully the ‘Trail Camera’ is selected in the Detection Type field! Those devices are advancing rapidly and it’s helpful to see the how they compare. Some have included the brand of personal camera used to obtain the photograph, but there’s nothing wrong with that, it still helps for those of us interested in product performance!

Please add a comment to this post to share your input!

Posted on 21 November, 2013 20:51 by dbroman