Using iNaturalist to Improve Your Identification Skills

Are you interested in improving your plant or animal identification skills? Did you ever wonder how many species of plants and animals inhabit Newton’s parks and conservation areas? iNaturalist is an incredibly powerful web-based tool for natural history learning and biodiversity tracking.

For example, you can take a few pictures of an interesting butterfly on your phone and post them to iNaturalist. iNaturalist can help you identify the butterfly with computer-driven algorithms and crowd-sourced recommendations from a community of experts. You can also query iNaturalist to look for other observations of the butterfly in Newton or any geographic area you are interested in. The Newton Conservators is using iNaturalist for open space biological inventories and bioblitz events.

Jon Regosin provides a tutorial and tips to help you use iNaturalist. Jon is the former Deputy Director of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and is a returning board member of Newton Conservators, for which he’s worked on variety of projects including the preservation of Newton Community Farm and Newton Bioblitz.

Jon led a series of s BioBlitz events in Newton utilizing iNaturalist to catalog species. Additional BioBlitz events are anticipated in the future. Watch for upcoming events on the Newton Conservators website at https: //newtonconservators.org/events.

This webinar was originally presented live on September 13, 2023 as part of the Newton Conservators 2023 Fall Webinar Series hosted by Beth Wilkinson. Nyssa Patten provided technical assistant and Ted Kuklinski handled video editing.

Here is the main website for iNaturalist:
https://www.inaturalist.org/

Here is an article on iNaturalist from our Fall 2019 Newton Conservators Newsletter.
https://newtonconservators.org/wp-con...

The iNaturalist survey of Newton Parks includes the following areas: Webster Woods, Cold Spring Park, Edmands Park, Flowed Meadow, Nahanton Park, Dolan Pond Conservation Area, and Kennard Park. Each of these areas has a significant number of existing iNaturalist observations. Any observations done in these areas will automatically be included in the Newton Survey. Here is a link to the survey:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/...

INDEX

00:00 Webinar Introduction
01:04 Speaker Introduction
01:40 Presentation
02:26 iNaturalist Intro
04:32 What is iNaturalist
10:00 Looking at the Website
17:42 Projects
18:52 Newton Project
21:48 Android - Explore
23:36 iPhone - Explore
24:23 Android - Explore Location
25:08 iPhone - Explore Location
26:19 Android - Explore Filters
26:59 Android - New Observation
31:42 iPhone - New Observation
33:38 Android Activity
36:44 iPhone Activity
37:35 iNaturalist Tips
44:30 Question and Answer
58:00 Credits
58:44 End

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