by Michael Genrich

One of the reasons to love your Park Lands is the diversity of environments and plants and animals across all of your 32 Parks and six Squares.

If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the flora and fauna in your Park Lands, or share your own knowledge with others, there’s now a smartphone app to help you identify species; and/or share your observations.

iNaturalist is described as an ‘online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature’.

It’s both a smartphone app and a website. The idea behind iNaturalist is that anyone can becoming a citizen scientist and/or learn from fellow citizen scientists. Just snap a pic, or a video, or even just a sound and upload it as a record of biodiversity at that time and location. Or check what others have noted in the location you’re in.

You don’t need to know the name of the species you’re noting. When you share imagery or sounds, the iNaturalist community will help you name them.

iNaturalist has a worldwide database containing over 100 million observations by nearly 3 million people.

By 17 August 2022, more than four hundred observers have made more than six thousand observations in your Adelaide Park Lands, and the numbers are rapidly growing.

Each one of the Parks within your Adelaide Park Lands has its own iNaturalist page. Recording the biodiversity of your Adelaide Park Lands, with your help, is an ongoing “project” within iNaturalist.

You can record and upload your observations at any time. When you log in to the app, you’ll see special events, like ‘bioblitzes’. These events are designed to bring people together to generate lots of observations at once.

We’ll be encouraging participants in our Guided Walks to start recording what they see and hear during the event, to contribute to the records on iNaturalist.

There’s plenty of scientific names and taxonomy terms in iNaturalist, but it’s not just for green thumbs and scientists - it’s for everybody.

I had the opportunity to test iNaturalist on a recent APA Guided Walk and uploaded a picture of a tree we were having trouble identifying.

Within days, another user had suggested that it was of the phylum Angiospermae meaning “flowering plant”. Not very helpful, but it was a first step. Other users presumably will contribute towards clearer identification of that tree.

iNaturalist aims to create 100 million connected citizen naturalists by 2030. We can better learn to protect our environment by getting out and understanding it together.

The more people who contribute observations, the more useful iNaturalist will become as a guide to others.

You can use the app in your Park Lands to help you explore what others have already found and noted. When you are in your Park Lands you can zoom in to right where you’re standing for information on what’s around you.

If you’d prefer to jump in with a search for particular animals or plants, guides will give you insight into how the species got there and where they usually live.

iNaturalist gives all its users a greater understanding of the world by connecting more people to each other through nature.

You can download the iNaturalist app from:

• the Apple “App Store” or

• the Android app store on Google Play.

Keep it handy next time you EXPLORE in your Adelaide Park Lands.