Citizen Science Case Studies

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Process

The Rock Pool Project

Before data can be shared beyond iNaturalist, they have to be verified to ensure they meet the Research Grade quality requirements, and to ensure the identification of the taxa found are correct.

Verification

Hub volunteers verify the records following the completion of the bioblitz. They do this directly in iNaturalist, confirm and correcting the records within 5 days of the event. Other iNaturalist users who are familiar with a particular taxon can also verify records by agreeing or disagreeing with a given identification. Records require two or more users to agree with an identification for them to reach Research Grade. Other requirements are:

A valid date
Valid location
A photograph of the sighting
The organism is not captive/cultivated
Two or more agreed identifications

Recording sightings directly through the app can help with the verification, as taking the photo through the app will automatically record the date and location, and there is an integrated identification tool to help identify the species from the photograph provided.

The Rock Pool Project team create an iNaturalist project for each bioblitz location with a specific boundary for the survey locations and times. Any records that fall outside of this are not added to the bioblitz results, aiding the verification of the time and location of sightings.

Standardisation

Collecting data using iNaturalist removes the need for standardising the data and collating metadata, as this is done automatically through the app. Data from iNaturalist are all shared in the same format, standardised to Darwin Core Archive, which allows the archiving into repositories and onward sharing, discussed in the next two sections. Darwin core is a biodiversity data standard that allows biodiversity data, particularly occurrence and related metadata, to be shared and managed, and reused.

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