- Author: Jaime Adler
Whether you are enjoying a family day at the beach or a hike through the woods, the pictures you take not only document your memories, but they also capture observations in nature. The relatively new website, iNaturalist, creates a forum for the public to be able to share those photos as a living record of our environment.
iNaturalist works in three different ways. You can post your own observations by creating a free account and uploading a picture of a beautiful patch of wildflowers or a type of bird you have never seen before. Other users can then comment on your photo and also help you identify the species you observed. You can also use the site to explore your neighborhood,...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
When the great outdoors is your research laboratory, gathering data can be a challenge. To get a broader perspective on the extent of damage caused by sudden oak death, a UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension geographer is using crowd sourcing to enhance her research on the disease that has killed over a million of California’s iconic oak trees since 1995.
Maggi Kelly, UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension specialist, started collecting data from community members through her OakMapper website in 2001. Now she has a mobile application for smartphones.
While out in a park or forest, iPhone users can use the new OakMapper mobile app to report...