Our Projects
iNaturalist is a social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity.
You don’t have to know what you are looking at, or be an amazing photographer. If your picture is clear, once it’s uploaded iNaturalist will give you suggestions about what it thinks you just took a photo of, and you can choose one, especially if it says “Visually Similar” AND “Seen Nearby.”
Note: You can only include pictures taken during the period of this challenge. If you’ve already using iNaturalist, great! Only the data collected during the allotted time will count for this particular project.
How?
Take a picture and upload it to iNaturalist online website (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-of-bowen-island) or use the iNaturalist app.
iNaturalist – how it works
Turn your next outing into a journey of scientific discovery.
Download your free iNaturalist app at iNaturalist.ca and join a network of hundreds of thousands of people observing wildlife around the globe. Using a smartphone or digital camera, anyone can share sightings of flora and fauna and contribute to a growing record of biodiversity. It’s “citizen science” that’s fun, educational and impactful.
Share your observations
Record evidence (photo or sound) of any living thing – a plant, fungus, animal or even tracks and scat – and upload it through the iNaturalist app or online at iNaturalist.ca. Make sure to take in-focus, close-up photos of identifying features. If you need guidance, follow the resources in the Help section of iNaturalist.ca.
The Bowen Island Conservancy
Biodiversity Project
From bracken to bioluminescence, it’s all part of our biodiversity!
We are pleased to be working with the The Bowen Island Conservancy on the Biodiversity Project, a tool to build our baseline of knowledge about all things wonderfully wild --from whales to worms and lichen to sea squirts. How much do you know about the wild things that share this island with you? - This is a chance to build and share your knowledge while having fun, and maybe even save some island species.
Discover your neighbourhood. - Look closely at the spaces that you might otherwise pass by. Wild things are all around us, but may be disappearing before our eyes.
The Goal
This summer, we're inviting the island community to work together to collectively post 1000 observations of wildlife and natural species from neighbourhoods around the Island.
Where: Look where you live!
June - September - The Summer Biodiversity Blitz
The Challenge:
Together, let’s log 1000 observations this summer!
Get outside and take photos of plants, animals and other strange and wonderful wild things and share them on iNaturalist.ca. Make observations in your neighbourhood, or club and challenge other neighbourhoods or clubs, to make the most observations, or log in the most species.
At the end of the challenge we’ll analyze the data and let you know who turns out to be our top contributor to biodiversity science, which neighbourhood has the most species, observations and citizen scientists, and which clubs and businesses made the most contributions. Rally your friends and neighbours!
The majority of today’s extinctions occur on islands. If we don’t know what species we have, we may not have a chance to save them. This is a way to have fun and learn more about our island flora and fauna while helping to add data that may be helpful in guiding local solutions for island stewardship long into the future. You will also add to the data base repositories like the NatureServe Canada, Canadensys and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to help other scientists. All you have to do is observe.
Learn about species
No more wondering what species you’re looking at. iNaturalist’s auto-identification feature instantly offers species suggestions.
The technical side
A summer-long “Bio blitz” set up as a “Collection” project on iNaturalist which will automatically collect all submissions that meet quality standards for proper identification and will file them into location, date, and species categories and also by participant, and neighbourhood.
Project leaders will monitor observations, add journal notes to the Bio blitz online journal, aid in identification of species, and will also recruit other managers to assist in promotion, identification and citizen-science community building.
One of the project coordinators will break out the data subsets to determine number of total species, neighbourhoods, uploads, etc. and compile a report.
Once the project page is loaded, all observations that fit into the pre-set date and location will appear in our Bowen Island Bio Blitz file.
After participants upload a picture, it will take a few minutes to upload to the project. If the picture is clear, you will see a badge appear that lets them know if it is “research grade.”
After the closing date of the summer blitz, submissions can continue to be added to our baseline date on an on-going basis, but the competition will have closed for the season.
More projects coming soon to this site:
Discover Island Ecology with Bowen Island Field Guides
Now that you're looking at local species, let the field guides to help you learn about ecological areas around the island and the animal species that live there, from our shorelines to our wetlands and forests.
Release date Summer 2021
Local Amphibians and Wetlands baseline study
Chantal, a BSc grad and researcher spent many months documenting amphibian habitats and species distribution around Bowen Island.
Watch for her interactive report to be released soon.
Chorus Frog
OnTheWildSide.ca
Research. Education. Communications. Community Outreach. Change.