City Nature Challenge Comes To Baltimore, This Month and Next
April 10, 2018
Contact: Office of Government and Public Affairs
Phone: 410.837.5739
The University of Baltimore will partner with the National Aquarium to help Baltimore make its mark on the map during the 2018 City Nature Challenge, a global crowd-sourcing effort to document urban biodiversity. You can get involved too—all you need is a smart phone.
City Nature Challenge started as a friendly rivalry between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2016. The goal was to see which city could document the most local biodiversity by harnessing the power of mobile technology and eager citizen scientists. In 2017, 16 cities joined in. This year, the competition has expanded to 60 cities across five continents, including Baltimore.
As part of this effort, UB's Wolf T. Pecher and Stanley J. Kemp, associate professors in the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences and its Division of Science, Information Arts and Technologies, are organizing a trip to the Jones Falls near campus. Interested staff, faculty, and students can help them collect and document macro invertebrates as part of the citywide effort. Both Pecher and Kemp have done extensive work documenting the ecosystem of the Jones Falls. During the event, Kemp will electrofish the falls while volunteers document the findings.
The City Nature Challenge uses the iNaturalist app as its digital platform. The app functions as a sort of real-life version of the popular augmented reality monster-collecting app, Pokemon Go. Users can document any plants, animals, or insects they encounter in their daily routines, or help identify wildlife found by other users. The app then attaches a geolocation tag to the photo, which is added to a map of the region that all users can access. The app also offers "Missions," which challenges users to find specific plants and animals; and projects, like the City Nature Challenge, which help organizations collect data they need for research.
The first half of the challenge, which will take place April 27-30, will focus on documentation. During this time, the goal is upload as many photos of as many species as possible to the iNaturalist app. The second half of the challenge, taking place May 1-3, is devoted to identification. Participants can use iNaturalist to help others identify all the findings that were made in the first half of the challenge.
The City Nature Challenge is organized by the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Learn more about Baltimore's efforts in this year's City Nature Challenge.
Get the iNaturalist app, free in both the App Store and Google Play.
Learn about UB's B.A. in Environmental Sustainability and Human Ecology.