iNaturalist and Appalachian Mountain Club

iNaturalist allows anyone, anywhere to contribute to a global record of biodiversity by uploading pictures of plants and animals with their smartphone or computer. In this episode, co-host Justin Schell talks with Dr. Carrie Seltzer, the Stakeholder Engagement Strategist for iNaturalist, about how the platform works, the iNaturalist community, and how iNaturalist advances scientific research. Featured in this episode is the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), the oldest outdoor group in the United States. The AMC runs multiple citizen science projects, and in this episode, Georgia Murray, a staff scientist at AMC; Annie Evankow, a Research Assistant with AMC; and Alina Michelewicz, a volunteer with a number of AMC projects speak about their citizen science work with iNaturalist — how they have been able to supplement the core data fields on iNaturalist with some specific to their project, as well as how they have approached citizen science and research with the Northeast Alpine Flower Watch project.  Music for this episode is from MWD, used under a Creative Commons license from the Free Music Archive. Special thanks to Jill Nugent for conducting the interview with the AMC team. A transcript is available here. 

For those of you who have accounts on SciStarter, add your iNaturalist username to your SciStarter dashboard, and you’ll get credit for your contributions.

 

Links:

iNaturalist

Appalachian Mountain Club

Seek 

Global Biodiversity Information Facility

National Phenology Network

Toilet weasel publication 

Justin's (Mistaken) Coyote Identification