[MAIPC] Using New iNaturalist Collective Projects for Early Detection of Invasive Plants

[Kate Wagner]

Dear MA-IPC Members:

My name is Kate Wagner. I am a writer by trade and a life-long citizen
scientist who has been working primarily in North Carolina focusing on
using citizen science resources, specifically iNaturalist, for the purposes
of early detection of invasive plant outbreaks. [I gave a talk at the 2016
NC Invasive Plant Council Symposium about this! (
http://nc-ipc.weebly.com/2016-agenda.html)]

I have since moved to Maryland, and am eager to continue my work in the
Mid-Atlantic. I wanted to make the list-serve aware of the new collective
projects iNaturalist rolled out in April. (Note: I am not professionally
affiliated with iNaturalist in any way, and am just an enthusiast.) Unlike
the previous iNaturalist projects, which required tediously adding
observations to projects manually, the new collective projects aggregate
sightings and observations by taxa in real time, which makes them
particularly useful tools for tracking and verifying citizen science
reports of invasive plants as they come in.

I wanted to alert you to a new collective project I created for invasive
plants in the state of Maryland based off of the Mid-Atlantic National
Parks Invasive Plant List and lists of invasive plants compiled by
organizations and government offices in Maryland:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/invasive-exotic-plants-of-maryland

Already the project has aggregated over 6,000 invasive plant sightings in
Maryland and is aggregating more in real time every day. Some sightings
include plants currently being discussed right now in the listserv, such as
Wavyleaf Basketgrass, which was observed by a volunteer naturalist yesterday
<https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14905447>. Volunteers with
training on how to identify invasive plants can then verify these
sightings, follow up about reports to EDDMapS, and the complete list of
observations can be exported as a CSV. iNaturalist users can "follow" the
project and get updates on their iNaturalist dashboard. (I call it Twitter
for Plants)

If anyone has any questions about how the projects work, or if there is
broader interest in the creation of a new collective project targeting the
entirety of the Mid-Atlantic or simply for other states in the
Mid-Atlantic, I am happy to help anyone who is interested.

I also look forward to helping the MA-IPC in any other way I can.

Best wishes,

Kate Wagner
Baltimore, MD 21218
910-684-0083
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/kate_wagner
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