BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) – Friday, April 26 through Monday, April 29, over 700 cities across the globe will take part in the annual City Nature Challenge, a collective citizen science effort to identify and observe as many species as possible through iNaturalist.
For the first time, Bowling Green will include itself in the challenge, brought to the community by Wild Ones Southern Kentucky and Lost River Cave.
While it originated in 2016 as a competition between two cities in California, the City Nature Challenge has now grown exponentially, and through the accessibility of iNaturalist, anybody with a smartphone is able to contribute.
“If you’ve never downloaded iNaturalist, it’s just this really fun app that uses both science and AI to help you identify the things around you,” explained Katie Marquardt, president of Wild Ones Southern Kentucky.
Through the app, users can submit a photo of any plant, animal, or fungi species, as well as signs of animals nearby, including tracks and scat. That information is then placed on a map where scientists worldwide can weigh in on the validity of the identification.
“You snap a picture of it, the AI in the app tells you, “Oh, we think this is a spider,” but beyond that, when you make that observation, there’s gonna be scientists and different experts that get on the app and they help you identify it and they make sure that the AI was right. So, eventually, your observation becomes like a research grade observation as just a community scientist, somebody out there making observations in the natural world,” Marquardt explained.
With the information gained year after year from the growing challenge, scientists worldwide are able to gain an in-depth understanding of the status of natural areas around cities and dictate what decisions should be made to protect them.
“When you get this timed shot from this time in April and every year you’re seeing, “okay, there’s less of this species in this location, but there’s more of it in this location.” So, it really does make an impact, it really does help scientists and ecologists kind of make decisions and inform their research.”
A live update of Bowling Green’s rank in the challenge can be found on iNaturalist’s website.
Saturday, April 27, Lost River Cave and Wild Ones Southern Kentucky will host a Bioblitz event in their meadow from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., assisting with the ongoing challenge.
“That’s when you can come out and you can use iNaturalist or not, but what you want to do is observe the plants in the meadow and see what species are there, what species are missing, what species are there that shouldn’t be there. And they can come for any time of that day and just see the meadow, just get acquainted with it, or if you’re really ready to dig in you can have your app ready to go, take pictures and help us identify those species,” Marquardt said.
Following the Bioblitz, Lost River Cave naturalists will host an invasive plant pull volunteer event from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
While the event spans four days, observations through iNaturalist can be made at any time.
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