From JSTOR Daily
iNaturalist and Crowdsourcing Natural History
The citizen-science app iNaturalist lets you record observations of plants and animals. The data can be used to study biodiversity.
By Matthew Wills
The citizen-science database iNaturalist is closing in on 49 million observations. This app-based initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic allows anyone with an internet connection to upload location-coded images and sounds of plants and animals. If the observer doesn’t know what they’re looking at, other participants or the app’s artificial intelligence ID function may be able to help.
Begun as a master’s-degree project of three students at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information in 2008, iNaturalist has become one of the most popular nature apps ever. Over a million and a quarter people are now participating.
iNaturalist was conceived by MIMS alumni Jessica Kline Ken-ichi Ueda, and Nathan Agrin as a 2008 final project.
