annkatrinrose's Journal
Hello AppState BioBlitzers and friends! Are you ready for the next round? Join us for the Fall 2023 BioBlitz showdown from Monday, September 25 to Sunday, October 1st. Here's the new project for our fall competition: AppState BioBlitz Fall 2023
Hi all! We're at it again with another round of BioBlitzing against UNC Greensboro, Wilmington, and more. Join us for the Fall 2023 BioBlitz showdown from Monday, September 25 to Sunday, October 1st: AppState BioBlitz Fall 2023
Hi all,
thanks for joining our iNaturalist project for the AppState Fall 2023 BioBlitz challenge! This is where we will collect all qualifying observations. Starting tomorrow! Will we be able to repeat our great results from last fall?
We can use all the help we can get! Please share your excitement with your classes, friends and family. Everyone can participate! For more details, check out the BioBlitz Homepage. Feel free to share widely to recruit participants!
We are competing again with UNC Greensboro representing the Piedmont and UNC Wilmington representing the coast for the informal title of Most Biodiverse UNC Campus. You will be able to find the leaderbord at the 2023 Fall NC Campus Nature Challenge Project.
The rules are:
1) Observations need to be made on AppState property,
2) within the week of September 25th - October 1st, 2023,
3) and need to be of wild organisms.
Q: How do I know where to go?
A: The map on the project home page has the boundaries of all qualifying areas outlined. These are the same as for the Fall 2022 project and we shared some videos with more details for this, which you can find on this AppState BioBlitz YouTube playlist.
Q: I'm too busy - can I still post stuff after the official week?
A: Yes, you can! The critical date is the observation date (aka the date when you took the picture), not the upload date. If your time is limited, focus on taking pictures during the week of the BioBlitz to record your observations. You can process and upload them later when you have more time.
Q: What counts as "wild" organism?
A: Any non-human organism except for cultivated plants (planted/potted) and captive/domestic animals (including pets). Simply speaking, if a plant or animal was purposefully put there by humans, it does not count. However, a weed popping up on its own between those plantings, or lichen growing on a stone wall, or a tick you found on your dog would count as wild, so look carefully what else you can spot around the planted stuff in landscaped areas! A planted street tree might not qualify for the project, but you can often find a dozen other things on or around it that would count. You can use the iNat or iNot? google slide quiz to test your understanding of what would qualify for our BioBlitz.
Q: What features should I take pictures of so the species can be identified?
A: This will depend on what you are photographing. This iNaturalist Photo Guide has some really nice examples and guidelines what to focus on for various types of organisms.
Any other questions? Please let us know!
Annkatrin and Marta
Hello friends and followers!
It's that time again: The next NC inter-campus Nature Challenge is happening this coming week. Appalachian State University, UNC Greensboro, and UNC Wilmington will be facing off against each other again to see whose students can find the most wildlife on campus during the week.
Anyone can participate, either as an observer or as an identifier. Observations have to be of wild organisms, made on university properties, and during the week of Sep. 25 - Oct. 1, 2023. You can join the AppState BioBlitz project if you want, or use it to filter for observations that need IDs to help us out! (I'm sure the other universities would appreciate some help, too, especially with IDs.)
I expect a good number of first-time iNat users and there will be prizes to win and extra credit to earn. I will try to keep an eye on things, but any help with IDs and marking things cultivated that aren't wild would be very much appreciated!
To make it easier to sort out the planted from the wild, I've created an AppState Tree and Shrub Inventory project for the cultivated stuff. Feel free to check that out to see what species have been previously observed planted around campus. (If you are exploring that project, remember to uncheck "verifiable" or nothing will show up since everything in it is casual.)
Good morning everybody! First day of the Fall 2023 AppState BioBlitz! Marta got us started again with the first couple of observations!
Several of you have asked me about locations and directions, so here's a list of places where you can go this week to make observations.
In town (PDF with map):
Out-of-town locations:
If you have any questions how to get to places or who to contact, please let me know!
Hi AppState BioBlitzers! We're off to a great start! I'm planning a walk to the Nature Preserve this evening. If you need help with the app or just would like to join in, we'll meet at my office (Rankin West 266) at 5 PM and start at the Geology rock garden. This will be a slow walk trying to find as many things to observe for the BioBlitz as possible, so we may not even get very far into the Nature Preserve until it gets dark but at least you'll know how to get there!
Good morning AppState Team!
We're off to a great start for the Fall 2023 BioBlitz! UNC Wilmington took the lead yesterday with nearly a thousand observations already. We are currently just short of 500 so we'll have some catching up to do. You can find the leaderboard for the challenge here: 2023 Fall NC Campus Nature Challenge.
So where should you go and what should you look for on our second day? I have two suggestions based on previous years:
We have crescent-cup liverwort growing on the banks of Boone Creek running through Durham Park. It was observed during our previous two challenges and is a bit of an odd occurrence. Marie L. Hicks' field guide for the liverworts of NC describes it as an exotic liverwort native to the tropics and frequently found in greenhouses, where it is a common weed on soil in and on clay pots. There is a herbarium record for it that was collected at AppState in 1976 with the location given as "in flower pot in chemistry department." I wonder if its introduction to campus goes all the way back to that record. With observations in both fall and spring, it seems to be making it through our winters just fine. Can we find it again and confirm that we have an established population of it in Durham Park?
Another plant to be on the lookout for is mile-a-minute weed at the Greenway. This stuff is a nasty invasive and listed as a class B noxious weed in NC. There have been eradication efforts hand-pulling the plants as well as releasing a predatory weevil for biological control. Have those been successful or is it still out there and thriving? It was already spotted twice again yesterday! All observations of it would be helpful to those who are trying to combat the infestation in Boone. It would be fruiting at this time of year and if you can collect and trash/destroy the fruits if you find it, that would be helpful, too (don't leave them where birds can find them and spread the seeds).
Happy second day of exploring the biodiversity on our campus!
Good morning everyone!
Yesterday was another very active day for our campus nature challenge. UNC Greensboro closed the gap and for a few hours relegated us to the trailing spot. We've pulled slightly ahead of them again. As of this morning, UNC Wilmington is still leading with over 1,500 observations now, with AppState at 904 and UNCG at 832. We're trailing in terms of number of observers and could use some more folks actively participating. Tell all your class mates, friends and families! UNCW already has cracked the 100 participants threshold, UNCG is following with 54 while AppState has so far 41 active observers contributing.
Among our participants, maxbird1 is leading for number of observations made with the top 5 currently rounded out by leighalobelia, kirnsc, amills9418, and nicole_lowder. Remember we'll have prices in the end for the most observations made and most species observed.
We are doing great with getting things sorted out and identified! In the past challenges, I remember adding a lot of initial IDs for folks who uploaded their observations as "unknown" and this time around I barely have to do that. We are much closer on UNCW's heels in terms of number of species identified with 405 for UNCW, 374 for AppState, and 207 for UNCG. Great job on finding that diversity out there! Looking at my own first day observations, I was able to document six species that I had never observed on iNaturalist before. I'm looking forward to seeing how many new ones we can add to our campus inventory in this BioBlitz round.
A lot of our species observed so far are plants (over 60%). There is only one non-plant among the top 20 species and that is the fall webworm moth coming in at spot 19 with its webs everywhere now. Last fall, we had more animals and fungi recorded than this fall so far. Keep an eye out for those critters and 'shrooms! There are a couple of rain showers in the area this morning, so mushrooms should really pop for the rest of the week. Last fall, we struggled to find them because the weather was so dry. I know I often overlook them but this is a great opportunity to add some stuff not previously observed yet. One tip for mushroom IDs: In addition to a picture from the top, you'll need a picture of the underside of the cap that shows whether it has gills or pores, and often also a side view showing the stipe (stalk).
One question that came up: Do sound recordings count? Yes, they do! Evidence for an organism can be pictures or sound files. If you have recordings of birds or crickets or whatever, you can absolutely upload that as an observation. Accepted formats include wav, mp3, or m4a.
Just a reminder that only wild organisms count for the BioBlitz. Observations of planted trees and shrubs are still valid observations for iNaturalist and will contribute to the AppState tree and shrub inventory but they won't help us win the challenge. If you post observations of landscaping plants, please remember to mark them cultivated (not wild). I know this will make these drop out of the BioBlitz project, but to be able to use our biodiversity data for research purposes it is important to sort out naturally occurring species vs. stuff that was put there by humans.
Lastly a heads-up that we will have an Open Gate BioBlitz event at the Dark Sky Observatory again on Saturday afternoon from 1-4 PM. There will be a guided hike at 1 PM and we'll have some nets for insect sampling. It's about a 25 minute drive from Boone but GPS will send you on a long detour due to the Parkway closure not knowing that the Phillips Gap Rd crossing is open. From Boone, take 421 to 221 to Idlewild to Phillips Gap Rd for the fastest way to get there. I will post more detailed directions on Friday.
Now let's get out there and find some more organisms to observe today!
Good morning AppState!
We are now halfway through our BioBlitz week and cracked the 1,000 observation mark yesterday. Great job! We will have several classes out in the field today and tomorrow targeting ASU Lake and the Gilley Research Station. Looking forward to seeing what they find!
UNCW is determined to win this time. They have about twice as many observers on the ground for this round, pulling in twice as many observations as we did so far. We have our work cut out for us for the rest of the week! We are doing great on recruiting more participants but could certainly still use more help. We are finding some great biodiversity though - UNCW's lead in terms of number of species is not as strong. Here are the leaderboards as of this morning - you can also check for them live at the 2023 Fall NC Campus Nature Challenge project:
Good morning AppState Team!
Great job on finding that biodiversity on campus! We are at 811 taxa (715 species) this morning compared to a final total of 825 taxa (709 species) last fall when we did this for the first time. We've already beaten our own record for number of species observed and identified! (The taxa count on the project pages also includes IDs at genus and higher levels. These numbers are subject to change as observations accumulate IDs.)
Overall, UNCW is still leading the pack with over 4,500 observations this morning. We made it over 2,500, and UNCG cracked the 1,000 threshold. We recruited some more observers with currently 113 actively involved, but we could still use some more. UNCW has 180 people making observations so far.
Amongst the AppState group, we have five observers now who have collected over 100 observations each. It looks like maxbird1 and leighalobelia are battling it out for the top observer spot with over 300 observations each, followed by amills9418, andersonnathanielbirmingham, and kirnsc.
I'm looking forward to a great Open Gate event at the ASU Dark Sky Observatory tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon from 1-4 PM. Come on out to explore the woods around the Observatory! The weather forecast looks great and we do have permission to sample bugs and leaves. If you need to do a collection for entomology or dendrology, bring your nets and plant presses! We will start with a guided walk and sampling demo at 1 PM.
Directions for the DSO event:
The Parkway is currently closed, but the Phillips Gap Rd stretch is open. Be aware that GPS does not know this and will send you on a long detour. Here's the most direct route from Boone (~25 minutes):
• Take US 421 S (towards Wilkesboro)
• Merge onto US 221 towards West Jefferson (ramp on the right)
• After 2.5 miles, turn right onto Idlewild Rd
• After 3.4 miles, turn right onto Phillips Gap Rd (intersection after speed limit drops to 45)
• After 2 miles, turn left onto the Blue Ridge Parkway (barricade to the right)
• Turn right at the next barricade to stay on Phillips Gap Rd
• Turn left onto Observatory Rd and go all the way to the end of the road to park at the observatory building
We have three more days to go including the weekend. So grab your phones and cameras and see how much more biodiversity you can find!
