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
Today is the kick-off for the next round of BioBlitzing so get out there and observe what spring brings to our campus! You can join us at the Spring BioBlitz Project to keep track of your contributions but your observations will count whether you are a project member or not. All you need to do is get out there and make observations on AppState properties this week! Check the BioBlitz webpage for more details and opportunities.
Hi Folks,
we had so much fun with the BioBlitz last year that we'll be doing it again this year. We will have a Spring BioBlitz during Earth Week from April 17-23, 2023. Mark your calendars and feel free to join us again! You can find the spring '23 project here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/appstate-bioblitz-spring-2023
There will actually be a series of these types of events next month if this is something you enjoy:
If you enjoy these challenges and like to track your achievements, here are two more cool ways you can interact with iNaturalist:
We hope you will join us again this year for another round of fun BioBlitzing around the AppState campus!
Annkatrin & Marta
Hi everyone! Thanks for making our first ever AppState BioBlitz such a fun experience and resounding success!
Our challengers at UNC Greensboro have conceded to our win, haha! Thanks for the challenge, UNCG! We're definitely up for a rematch next year. :-)
Thanks also to those who stopped by for our little awards ceremony in the Rankin lobby yesterday. For those who missed it, here are the winners. It really came down to a tight battle between two dedicated students, one from Biology and one from Geography and Planning:
This adorable chipmunk observed by rivermont was selected to adorn our AppState BioBlitz 2022 buttons. (If you couldn't make it to the celebration yesterday and want a button to pin on your jacket, contact Marta.)
A couple of honorable mentions go to:
We really had a blast with this and definitely want to do it again. If you have feedback what went well and what didn't and how to improve it for the future, please let us know.
Please join us if you're around campus tomorrow for some cupcakes and to recognize the top scorers!
Hi everyone,
we are putting together a slideshow to feature some of the best pictures and most unique finds from our BioBlitz last week on the monitors around Rankin. You can help by letting us know which observations you would like to see featured!
As you browse through the project pool, you can click on the observations you like and add a star to mark your favorites. If you want to see what has been submitted for a particular group of organisms or from a particular user, you can narrow that down using the Filters. If you have a favorite species, you can type that into the Species window and see our observations for it. You can also use this method to find e.g. everything in a particular family or order. If you can't find any of the features I'm talking about, you may have to log in on the website - I'm not sure if and how they show up on the various phone apps.
For those really interested in the details of what we've found, I've printed out a couple of copies of a preliminary species list and put that with the poster in Rankin. Feel free to pick one up! This is still work in progress so we'll be posting an updated list again some time next week.
Thanks again everyone for the strong support and participation in the BioBlitz!
Hi all,
absolutely fantabulous job on the BioBlitz this past week! We added nearly 1,000 new observations again on the last day of the challenge. I think we handily beat our challengers at UNC Greensboro with 4,017 observations of 738 species to their 476 observations of 207 species collected in our respective projects. Great student engagement at AppState showing once again that this is the place to be for biodiversity. :-)
Browse the observations in the project to see all the cool stuff that people have submitted so far. See something you really like? You can click the star to add it to your favorites! This also makes them pop up on the bottom of the stats page to share some of the highlights from our pool of observations.
This week will be dedicated to doing some curating of the data by adding and verifying species names (as well as catching up with academic advising). Some people who took pictures with non-phone cameras or collected samples for microscopy or other lab analyses are still working on uploading their observations. Remember the critical date for meeting the time frame of the challenge is when you took the picture/sample, not the day it was added to iNaturalist. As a result of all this, you may see observation numbers still go up and down a little. Stay tuned for more updates later this week, but I wanted to give a snapshot of where we stand right now.
Number of participants:
We had 184 observers submitting observations so far. This includes 168 (77%) out of the 219 people who joined the project, with some folks participating who weren't project members. I also wanted to give a shout-out to our 349 identifiers so far, and especially tsn who added well over 1,000 IDs for us! These are the experts helping us curate the raw data and getting our observations to Research Grade. The help is very much appreciated!
Number of observations:
Total: 5,425 observations of 960 taxa uploaded
This is on average ~775 observations per day, and in total ~30 observations per observer. We've been busy! About 26% of these are casual observations and that number will likely rise a bit as the iNaturalist community continues sifting through the data for IDs and annotations.
Needs ID/Research Grade: 4,017 observations of 850 taxa uploaded
These are the observations that count in the BioBlitz project. Many of these still need to be curated, so numbers may fluctuate a little bit. Remember only wild organisms are eligible for Research Grade, so if your observations were of e.g. planted stuff they may eventually drop out of the project.
Number of species:
This is really the interesting part and again some species identifications still need to be added so number may change slightly. Check out the project stats to see a break-down of the types of organisms observed and hover the cursor over the colored sections in the species wheel to see the numbers of taxa in each category. So far, 738 of the 850 taxa observed in our project (3,475 or 87% of 4,017 observations) have been narrowed down to species level. Out of these, almost half have been confirmed already to achieve Research Grade (1,655 or 41% of 4,017 observations).
Most commonly observed species in total (including Casual observations):
Most commonly observed species at Research Grade:
The deer sure were eager to participate and get counted in our BioBlitz! Great turnout everyone! Stay tuned for more updates coming this week.
Happy Sunday morning everyone! Today is going to be the last day to make observations for the AppState BioBlitz 2022. If you want to participate and have not had a chance yet, get out there and observe! Parking on campus is free for all today, no permit required on any of the surface lots on Sundays.
Progress Update:
It has been quite a week and it's not over yet! A total of 4,494 observations of 863 taxa have been made so far, of which 3,220 observations (72%) and 736 taxa are counted in the project with 629 having been identified to species.
Why the difference between observations made vs. counted? The ones that are not counted are almost all cultivated plants. The purpose of this BioBlitz is to document what species occur naturally within AppState boundaries, not what was put there by landscaping crews. Observations should be of wild organisms, and stuff planted around campus won't qualify. See previous journal posts and the first video that was posted for examples and ideas what to observe instead.
Q: I made some of those observations of planted things. Do I have to delete them?
A: No! While they won't count towards our ongoing BioBlitz, they are still data and may be useful for other purposes. I made some of these observations myself for example to document plants still blooming at this time of year, which may be useful for tracking phenology. In the past, we've had students help with a tree inventory on campus, which needs updating and will benefit from your observations of planted trees. Just make sure to check "captive/cultivated" aka "not wild" on these observations to mark their status on iNaturalist.
Last day to get out there and add some more observations and species! The date that counts for the challenge is the observation date (date and time on your photos), not the upload date (when you posted to iNaturalist). We'll have a bit of a grace period to upload pictures taken this week before pulling the stats to determine the winners in our various categories.
We will also have some follow-up activities to help with identifying species and observations with the best pictures. If you browse the observations in the project and come across some you really like, hit that star to add it to your favorites to let us know! This will make them show up among the observations with the most comments and favs on the bottom of the Stats page. We'll have a monitor with a slide show in the Rankin lobby at the Geology Museum to showcase some of these observations.
Good morning and welcome to day 6 of our BioBlitz challenge! Two more days to go! Today will be potentially another big day: First day of the weekend, lots of folks in town, and another outing to one of our more quiet out-of-town places to find the wild things for observations.
If you are tailgating today and/or have folks coming to town for the Homecoming football game at Appalachian State University, let them know about our BioBlitz! Everyone can participate, they do not have to be AppState students or employees, and they do not even have to join our project for their stuff to count (although we'd welcome them, of course). All they have to do is make observations while on campus today and upload them to iNaturalist.
If you're looking for an opportunity to escape the traffic and tailgating that ensues in town with AppState football games, we will have the gate open for a quiet afternoon at the Dark Sky Observatory from 1-4 PM today. You can get there by following directions on your GPS, download and print the PDF, or check out the directions in the video introduction. We can stay until the astronomers arrive to set up their public event for tonight. If you are interested in joining that as well, please note the evening event at the telescope requires prior registration. You can get tickets at https://dso.appstate.edu/public-access. No tickets are needed for the BioBlitz, just stop by whenever it is convenient for you within the open gate time frame this afternoon. Drive all the way up the road to the visitor center for parking, or park anywhere along the side of the road (please make sure you are not blocking it).
Progress update:
The challenge is going great! We've cracked the 3,000 observation threshold with more than 600 species identified so far. Check out the project Stats tab for a breakdown of what has been identified so far. (The 'species' count on that page also includes observations identified to genus or family level, for example, and thus shows up higher than the actual species count.)
Remember we're giving out prizes for most species observed in total, but also for master botanist (most plant species observed), master entomologist (most insect species), master ornithologist (most bird species) and master mycologist (most fungi and lichen species). So if you are not in the running for most species overall, you could specialize in one of these areas for another chance at a prize. The leading contenders to beat this weekend are: leighalobelia for master botanist (136 species) and master mycologist (44 species), and rivermont for master entomologist (13 species) and ornithologist (35 species).
Let's get out there and find some more organisms to observe! The weather forecast looks great again with a mix of sun and clouds and temperatures in the 50s this afternoon. Tomorrow we're expecting more cloud cover and a chance of rain later in the afternoon.
Happy Friday morning everyone! We're up to 200 members in our project this morning. Great turnout everyone and welcome to all who joined in later during the week! Be sure to check out the older posts in the project journal for more info and videos what to do and where to go.
We will have a couple of opportunities today to join one or more group outings to explore off-campus places. (Sorry, no shuttle van today unless you are already part of a class making a trip. Organizing vans with Homecoming and a football game coming up tomorrow proved to be too challenging. If you do not have a car, you can still join the Greenway event by taking the AppalCart to the State Farm stop.)
ASU Farm - 10 AM
Join us this morning at the farm out in Fleetwood! Be aware that GPS can mislead you, so follow the posted directions and check out the video introduction for details how to get there and where to park. The Farm Director will meet us out there for a quick introduction before we start exploring. There will be classes going on as well, so please make sure your BioBlitzing does not interfere with farm or class activities going on. I will be there as well for questions and assistance for those who are not part of a class.
Greenway - 1 PM
Join up with a faculty-led group for some aquatic water sampling along the South Fork of the New River this afternoon! Meeting point will be the covered bridge next to the intermural fields. See the posted event listing for more details and contact info.
Gilley Field Station - 2 PM
For those interested, we will explore the Gilley property in Todd this afternoon. Feel free to join! I've never been there so don't know what to tell you about it yet, but I will be there as well for questions and BioBlitz guidance for those joining who are not in class. Park at Pilot Mountain Church (5635 Castle Ford Rd, Todd, NC 28684) and we will walk over from there.
And one more on-campus activity for today:
Night session at the Webb Rock Garden - 8 PM
Join in on a nighttime observation session at the rock garden just outside Rankin Science to find some nocturnal creatures! See the posted event listing for more details and contact info.
We've blown UNCG out of the water already!
If you are the competitive type, you can check out the cross-campus stats at the Campus Nature Challenge umbrella project. Go AppState! :-)
As of my last check, we had 576 species identified. Our most observed species are two invasive plants, oriental bittersweet and English ivy, followed closely by white-tailed deer. The top three native plants observed are rosebay rhododendron, white pine, and Christmas fern. We have a nice tight race for the top observer and most species spots going on with several students accumulating more than 100 observations total. Currently leading are leighalobelia with runner-ups rivermont, brynnaselah, and emma_nicholson.
Q: I made observations but they aren't showing in the project! What's going on?
A: There are a few possible reasons for this, but the most likely one is that your observations were of stuff planted around campus. Please note that only wild organisms count towards the BioBlitz. Cultivated plants and pets do not qualify, and as folks from the iNaturalist community go through our posted observations to add species suggestions and mark these as 'captive/cultivated', they may drop out of the project. About half of all the observations posted so far were of cultivated plants and have been disqualified already.
You still have time to catch up by refocusing your efforts on things that are wild such as the weeds between the plantings, the bugs on the flowers, birds in the trees, or lichens on rocks, for example!
