Jennifer Rycenga used to get depressed when she thought about the environment. The impacts of climate change made the avid birdwatcher feel powerless.
Until a rattlesnake appeared in her path on a hike six years ago.
When Rycenga heard its telltale rattle, she stopped short and turned her camera from the trees to the trail. The picture she took didn’t belong on any of her usual birding sites, so she went searching for another way to share it and came across an app, new at the time, called iNaturalist. And just like that, 30 years of bird obsession burst into a bloom of biodiversity and hope.
Rycenga, a professor of comparative religious studies in California, now posts 400 to 500 photos a month of lichens, reptiles, butterflies and more, making her an “iNat power user” among the free site’s 600,000 members. Both amateur and expert scientists help identify each other’s subjects and offer up details about them – now increasingly assisted by artificial intelligence (AI). The observations are archived with their geographic details, and the highest quality ones are added to global scientific databases, where they might be used to study the return of mushrooms after California’s severe droughts, for example, or research which species survived last year’s wildfires.
“Documenting and paying attention to the vast biodiversity around us is something we can all do that truly does help, and it doesn’t drain our spirits, but it feeds them,” Rycenga said. “We’re all teaching and learning from each other and making contributions that are valuable, and it’s one of the most rewarding things in my life.”
Reference Link : https://news.microsoft.com/features/like-taking-a-whole-scientific-team-with-you-on-a-walk-inaturalist-helps-spawn-a-generation-of-citizen-scientists/
