Projektin City Nature Challenge Southern Africa 2022 Päiväkirja

Congratulations. That was fun and exciting.

If you wish to see the world situation, it is https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022

Well done to La Paz and to Cape Town.
And thank you everyone who spent 4 days exploring their cities. I think most southern African cities can congratulate themselves on a job very well done. Hoping that amid the fun, you also had time to explore a few other cities.

Of course, this is not final. Please finish any uploading that you need to catch up on (you have 5 more days) Please regard these as urgent.
And the IDs still need to be done.

Initial Identifications

We have until midnight on 8 May to make identifications.

It makes sense to work in teams and groups, and not just on our own. Except for Cape Town: they will overwhelm us.

Stage 1 is to clear the unidentified observations.

1. Please dont bother to ID something as a Plant - you are just wasting time. If you know the family or genus of the plant, then please make an ID, otherwise just skip it for someone else to ID. Identifying Birds, Mammals, Fungi, Frogs, Fish and Reptiles is great (just not "Plants"). This is Blitz ID time, and with 90,000 Identifications to make, dont spend more than 10 seconds on an observation.
2. Identify as fine as you know. Family, Tribe, Genus, species, subspecies. Just skip what you dont know, above the level of Family in plants.
3. Use the curation tool. It is fast and efficient and supercool. This is how it works: https://vimeo.com/246153496 - this is a 2 minute refresher or tutorial, and worth the time taken to look at it. (note the Fave button).
4. Remember to FAVE any observation that you think should be included in the running for "Observation of the CNC 2022. for your city" Just the best of the best please.

Here goes (numbers at at 10am Tuesday):
Grassveld and Bushveld:
Urgent ID to group (1595 observations):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=unknown&project_id=126400%2C125535%2C126448%2C125987%2C129335%2C123909%2C116909%2C128974%2C125027%2C122659
ID needed to Research Grade (5949):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&project_id=126400%2C125535,126448,125987,129335,123909,116909,128974,125027,122659

KZN:
Urgent ID to group (1980 observations):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=unknown&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2022-ethekwini-municipality
ID needed to Research Grade (6740):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2022-ethekwini-municipality

Cape South Coast:
Urgent ID to group (1495 observations):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=unknown&project_id=122896%2C125988
ID needed to Research Grade (7504):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&project_id=122896,125988

Western Fynbos:
Urgent ID to group (1247 observations):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=unknown&project_id=24572,126065,125697,123126
ID needed to Research Grade (5074):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&project_id=24572%2C126065%2C125697%2C123126

&&
And dont forget to help Cape Town when you are done. Cape Town has 16,000 observations that critically need an ID: So please when you are done your region, see if you can help Cape Town: Details are here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2022-city-of-cape-town/journal/65296-2022-cnc-done-and-dusted-except-for-the-identifications

How is your city enjoying identifying the observations from the Challenge.
Have you identified your observation of the challenge yet?

Here are the top for southern Africa:

For the entire region:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?order_by=votes&place_id=any&project_id=city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2022&verifiable=any

For our cities - see the faves here:
City Nature Challenge 2022: City of Cape Town
City Nature Challenge 2022: Garden Route
City Nature Challenge 2022: Overstrand
City Nature Challenge 2022: Weskus
City Nature Challenge 2022: Ethekwini
City Nature Challenge 2022: Joburg

City Nature Challenge 2022: Nelson Mandela Bay
City Nature Challenge 2022: Thohoyandou
City Nature Challenge 2022: Bloemfontein
City Nature Challenge 2022: Northern Botswana

City Nature Challenge 2022: Kimberley
City Nature Challenge 2022: Botswana Central
City Nature Challenge 2022: Harare
City Nature Challenge 2022: Bulawayo

Not happy?
Think that there were better observations?
Then VOTE!!

How?

If while looking through observations, you find one that you like, or that enthrals you, or that surprizes or amazes you, Please VOTE for it.
To vote, look for the FAVE button. It is a star just under the map on the top right of every observation. Just click on the star to record your vote.

If while making identifications, you see an eligable observation, please VOTE for it.
The Fave button is at the bottom of the left hand picture panel, in the middle, to the left of the "captive" and "review" buttons. Just click it it to record your vote.

The observations with the most votes, will go into the final selection, that will be strongly determined by the number of votes.

What makes a great Observation?

• A stunning picture - for whatever reason
• Something unusual - a species, a behaviour, a situation
• An interesting story or circumstance - an interaction perhaps
• Something that amazes you: for its beauty (or ugliness), its majesty (or plainess), its inspiration (or dread).

• Just because you like it!
  It is entirely up to you. If enough people feel the same it will be the observation of 2022 City Nature Challenge.

We are in full identification phase. You can help!!

The smaller cities should have cleared their backlog by now. But help is still needed.
Remember: ID what you can and skip what you dont know (dont make vague IDs - above family level - we want family, genus, species: ignore observations that you cannot do this for).

Note: Please use the curation tool - it is fast, efficient and supercool. This is how it works: https://vimeo.com/246153496 - take the 2 minute refresher - it is worth the time
Note the Fave button!!!

Priority IDs: the purpose here is to ID to a level that specialists can get to them: click here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&page=15&iconic_taxa=unknown&project_id=city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2022&place_id=any

Vague IDs that need refinement:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual%2Cresearch&project_id=city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2022&lrank=epifamily&place_id=any&page=15

Specialist IDs: please see links here by region:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2022/journal/65300-it-is-done-well-done-and-now-the-identifications

Later phases of the process will be posted when we get there. Meantime: please clear those missing and vague IDs. We urgently need this done today, so that our professional experts can ID them on Friday.

Please help.

Time to stock take and finalize on strategy.

All Done: Congratulations!

Gaborone 100% RG : 0% Needs_ID

Well in Hand: 66% RG Possible!

Garden Route 55% RG : 40% Needs_ID
Nelson Mandela Bay 55% RG : 44% Needs_ID
Bloemfontein 41% RG : 48% Needs_ID
Northern Botswana 50% RG : 50% Needs_ID

Action Needed. 50% Research Grade unlikely at current tempo!
Consult Project journal page for latest strategy

Overberg 48% RG : 51% Needs_ID
Cape Town 35% RG : 54% Needs_ID
Overstrand 37% RG : 55% Needs_ID
Thohoyandou 43% RG : 57% Needs_ID

Serious Action Needed. 50% Research Grade unlikely with help!

eThekwini 34% RG : 59% Needs_ID help here
Harare 39% RG : 59% Needs_ID help here
Stellenbosch 28% RG : 60% Needs_ID help here
Kimberley 19% RG : 61% Needs_ID help here
Weskus 34% RG : 63% Needs_ID help here
Joburg 28% RG : 63% Needs_ID help here
Tshwane 26% RG : 70% Needs_ID help here

Emergency Action Needed. Please help!!!

Bulawayo 14% RG : 85% Needs_ID Help Here!!
Botswana Central 9% RG : 91% Needs_ID Help Here!! Moth specialists needed!

Thanks everyone for an exciting and interesting Challenge. We hope that you enjoyed it, and that you found time to see what other cities were doing and how things were progressing.

Please thank all those who took part in the challenge: The honours roll is here:
Observers!

And a very big thanks to those who identified all our observations over the past week. The honours roll is here:
Identifiers!

Please see your City's Project page for your local information!

The City Nature Challenge - apart from being fun - actually does collect some very useful data. Here are two uses that you might not have thought about much while running observing everything around you.
If you think of something to include here, please tell us.

Elevating species for the AI.
The iNat Artificial Intelligence ID is trained once a year. We dont routinely monitor species that get trained (not with over 20,000 species), but we do keep tabs on some groups such as the Proteaceae.

The 2022 CNC saw the following Proteaceae qualify for inclusion the the AI:

Diastella fraterna (thanks Overstrand)
Leucadendron laxum (thanks Overberg)
Leucospermum bolusii, truncatum (thanks Cape Town, Overberg)
Mimetes chrysanthus (largely planted! - not sure if they count: only 66 wild)
Protea subulifolia (thanks Overberg)
Serruria brownii (thanks Cape Town) , 'ludwigii'

That is 8 more species in the Protea Family now to be trained, making ID easier in the future. The CIty Nature Challenge probably pushed several hundred of our species into AI training.
Thanks everyone.

Data on threatened species
Data on threatened species is crucial for monitoring changes in threat status, both good and bad. Although we tend to focus on Red List species in spring (in the Great Southern Bioblitz), we still collected a lot of useful data. Here:

Altogether some 4,723 observations of 653 Red Data List species were made by 919 observers. That is some hot data. Our species account for 29% of the threatened species observed worldwide during the City Nature Challenge 2022. Very well done!

New Species and Range Extensions
It is difficult to keep tabs on New Species and New Records of Species in an Area, because it often takes months to verify that they are new or unidentified. So it is pointless enumerating them here, but you can see progress by clicking on these:
• New species: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2022&verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:New%20species%20reference%20and%20name
• Range extensions: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2022&verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:Range%20extension%20documentation