Citizen Science in Action

This article was originally published in The Midden – Great Basin National Park: Vol. 19, No. 1, Summer 2019.

The Great Basin National Park 2018 BioBlitz iNaturalist page shows 278
species for just four days!

Would you like to learn more about the nature around you? Or record what you see in Great Basin? Or perhaps help your teenager connect technology with nature?

One way to do that is with iNaturalist, both a free app and a website that allow you to record the nature you’re seeing around you.

Also, for the 2018 Beetle BioBlitz for Great Basin National Park, experts from the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum started a special iNaturalist page just for the BioBlitz. In only four days, they found 278 species! See the results here.

What if you don’t know what flower, insect, or mushroom you’re seeing? iNaturalist has started a new app called Seek, where you can take a photo of it and get a name for that organism!

The park hopes to use iNaturalist more to learn about what is blooming and what animals are being seen and welcomes contributions.