City Nature Challenge with George Gehrig

George Gehrig subscribes to the Fancy Scientist and responded to an email of mine asking about the impact of iNaturalist data on science. I thought that sounded like a great topic to discuss, and when I found out that George was the organizer of the City Nature Challenge for Bonner County, I thought – even better!

iNaturalist is an app that anyone with a smartphone can use to take photos of different things in nature, upload them to the platform for identifications, and to connect with members in their community or across the world. 

The City Nature Challenge is an annual event where cities “compete” to find the most species and activate the largest groups of people to get outside and document nature using iNaturalist.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of the City Nature Challenge to science and society, the many reasons why George is organizing one, and how you can get involved. 

Specifically we chat about:

• What is the City Nature Challenge? How was it started? 
• Why do we have a City Nature Challenge? 
• What is a bioblitz?
• How useful are iNaturalist data to scientists? 
• Why and how the City Nature Challenge has meaning beyond spotting species
• How to get people involved and to participate
• What impacts the City Nature Challenge can have on people
• How is a winner determined
• and MORE!

For full show notes click here.

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