Platform update (mini)

Thank you @Choyster

Well done everyone on this important update to the highest ranking Australian citizen science platform mobile app.

With the platform's structural simplification and mobile app update, the platform is well placed to handle the heavy loads expected during the spring silly season.

Just yesterday, we received 1198 sightings within 24 hours!

Woohoo! Lets go NatureMapr!

Looking forward to spring and the big increase in insect sightings 🦋

yeah MF I have insect scurvy - even though there has been an odd butterfly or other insect about over winter. Can't wait for the chase! :)

Hi Aaron, I am still experiencing major delays in being able to upload sightings using my iphone. I have updated it but it takes about an hour to upload, sometimes getting stuck overnight. Phone is receiving full bars of reception from the satellite. FrogID ap only takes 10min to upload. Am I doing something wrong. Looking forward to all the animals returning for spring.

Hi Aaron, we seem to have lost the "map" facility, whereby for any species you could call up a map and see all the places that species had been seen. I found it super helpful and used it a lot - I hope it hasn't gone forever! I'm using Chrome on a Mac.

@SenexRugosus Hi, Sadly, the map functionality has been discarded. See the announcement https://naturemapr.org/announcements/586 You are not the only one who is disadvantaged by this decision.

@AlisonMilton Oh dear. I read that announcement but did not interpret it as meaning the map display function would be disabled. Previously it was super useful to be able to see on a map exactly where particular plants were located, or insects were once seen, making it easy to revisit those locations. Having to copy and paste coordinates into a Google Map is kind of clumsy.

Hi Aaron, thanks for this update.

With the loss of some NatureMapr map functionality I decided to explore the functionality of other platforms. (I have particular needs and priorities and equipment so the following observations are entirely about my personal needs, wants and patterns of data gathering and use.)

My views are:
1. That, for the ACT and region in particular, the moderation in NatureMapr is superior in terms of completeness, timeliness and (possibly) accuracy down to species level. (IMO, this matters very much because, apart from some genus level observations, it is accurate species level data that really counts when it comes to being useful to scientists.) The situation with areas beyond the ACT region is, I believe, more complex and largely beyond my ken.

2. In terms of the transactional costs of uploading observations and of the moderation function iNaturalist is superior.

3. In terms of immediate visualization of what is happening to species data and personal data, iNaturalist is easiest to use.

4. In terms of extracting a range of data relating to a particular area and presented in different formats (spatially as well as lists), ALA is superior. However there may be up a week's delay between downloads from the various platforms (including both NatureMapr and iNaturalist) that download data into the ALA.

I am not agile when it comes to databases and maps and the like. However I have discovered that the difficulties were more imagined than real. Once I figured out how to use the ALA mapping and data export tools, I found them to be straightforward, simple and fast.

In particular I can very quickly go to any area in Australia, draw a polygon around it and get a map of point observation data or a complete list of all taxa in the ALA database for that area. The report can cover all species or a specified species. Users with specific requirements that might include platform source, observer source, blocks of time, or conservation status (as examples) can click the boxes in the export function. This can get complicated but once you learn your simple pathway to getting exactly what you want it is not at all complicated.

I now have excel spreadsheets for polygons I quickly and easily drew of, for example, Dryandra Street Woodland. (I plan to do a bit of a field trip to a regional NSW location later this year and will draw polygons around areas of interest and download from ALA spreadsheets of all species recorded for each area. If, for example, you are interested in whether a particular species has been recorded in a particular area then the excel term search function is extremely fast and extremely thorough.)

So what I intend to do from here on in is upload my observations to either NatureMapr or iNaturalist depending on my particular need. Having suffered some feelings of loss and grief when the loss of map functionality happened, I will now be able to appreciate being part of overlapping communities with a shared interest in conservation and the environment. I will use the on-the-fly the iNaturalist map visualization tools. I will use the ALA functions to draw polygons around personal areas of interest and to use the export function to get species level data.

My main message is that the platforms are not either/or. In my opinion they are highly complementary with each having its own particular strengths. It does not take a lot of effort to figure out how to maximize your inputs and outputs for each platform to best suit your particular needs. I look forward to continuing to contribute to NatureMapr and thus to conservation and to science. Having done the yakka of sorting through all the options and testing various options, I am more than willing to share with other NatureMaprs how they can continue to input to NatureMapr while extracting readily and quickly what they need from, for example, the ALA.