iNaturalist is an open science resource for ecological genomics by enabling rapid and tractable records of initial observations of sequenced biological samples

Goldberg, Jay Keche

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2023.0251

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 19 publications

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“…This accessibility fosters transparency, collaboration, and further research, particularly in the field of biodiversity. Additionally, it aligns with open science initiatives, ensuring that the data benefits both the public and the research community (Goldberg, 2023). By harnessing the iNaturalist application, we facilitated the active engagement of USM students, faculty, and staff, empowering them to contribute valuable data to the existing USM campus biodiversity long-term database in iNaturalist.…”

Section: The Essence Of the Usm Campus Nature Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

Universiti Sains Malaysia Campus Nature Challenge: A Collaborative Citizen Science Initiative For Biodiversity Conservation And Environmental Awareness

Che Jaafar,

Ghazali,

Ismail

et al. 2024

PaperASIA

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Considering the growing global biodiversity crisis, citizen science initiatives have emerged as powerful tools for long-term ecological data collection involving non-experts in research. “USM Campus Nature Challenge”, a collaborative effort led by the USM Library in partnership with the School of Biological Sciences and the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies, aimed to create awareness about ecological concerns and biodiversity conservation within the university community by documenting biodiversity at USM’s main campus. Methodologically, the project organized a 6-week ‘bio blitz’ event open to citizen scientists to explore the flora and fauna of USM’s diverse campus habitats while cataloging species through the iNaturalist app. The results revealed that plant species dominated the observations, constituting 64.9% of recorded biodiversity and reflecting the rich botanical diversity on the USM campus. Further observations included insects (10.4%), fungi (7.6%), birds (6.3%), and various other species, underscoring the complexity of the ecological web of the campus. An evaluation of data quality revealed that 36.6% of the species identifications were categorized as “Research Grade”, 47.8% were designated as needing further identification, and 15.7% were graded as “casual”. In conclusion, the project leveraged the approach to create more public awareness about local ecological concerns and to strengthen the University community’s connection to nature. This USM Library’s pilot initiative closely aligns with the Open Science movement related to citizen science in Malaysia.

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Section: The Essence Of the Usm Campus Nature Challengementioning

confidence: 99%

Universiti Sains Malaysia Campus Nature Challenge: A Collaborative Citizen Science Initiative For Biodiversity Conservation And Environmental Awareness

Che Jaafar,

Ghazali,

Ismail

et al. 2024

PaperASIA

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Instagram data for validating Nothofagus pumilio distribution mapping in the Southern Andes: A novel ground truthing approach

Werner,

Weidinger,

Böhner

et al. 2024

biogeography

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The availability of valid, non-biased species occurrence data has always been a major challenge for biodiversity research and modelling studies. Data from open-source databases or remote sensing are promising approaches to increase the availability of species occurrence data. However, these data may contain spatial, temporal, and taxonomic biases or require ground truthing. In recent years, social media has received attention for its contribution to species occurrence data sampling and ground truthing approaches. The wide reach of social media platforms allows for rapid and large-scale analyses. Here we introduce a novel Instagram ground truthing approach to validate the occurrence mapping of Nothofagus pumilio across its entire distribution range. The treeline species of the southern Andes has been extensively studied in small-scale studies, but large-scale modelling approaches are largely missing due to limited accessibility to treeline sites resulting in a lack of occurrence data. The content posted on the social media platform Instagram consists of images and videos in which the species N. pumilio and its location can be identified. By searching for suitable posts using hashtags and location tags, we created 1238 Instagram ground truthing points. We compared the performance of our dataset with open-source data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) through visual, quantitative, and bias analyses, acknowledging that both social media-based and Citizen Science data are subject to sampling and spatial biases due to collection in human-accessible areas. The Instagram ground truthing points were subsequently used to validate remote sensing occurrence data, generated using Sentinel-2 level 2A data and Supervised Classification. The combined approach – Instagram ground truthing and remote sensing – allows for the collection of occurrence data over the entire latitudinal range of N. pumilio, covering approximately 2000 km. The use of social media content provides potentially important contributions to species occurrence data sampling and ground truthing In our study we introduce a novel ground truthing approach for species occurrence data sampling based on Instagram data Instagram ground truthing points, combined with Supervised Classification generate species occurrence data of Nothofagus pumilio over its entire distribution range in the southern Andes The performance of the Instagram ground truthing points is evaluated by comparison with existing data from the GBIF database. Our Instagram ground truthing approach demonstrates a new way of sampling species occurrence data and can be applied to other suitable species and study areas.

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iNaturalist is an open science resource for ecological genomics by enabling rapid and tractable records of initial observations of sequenced biological samples

Cited by 2 publications

References 19 publications

Universiti Sains Malaysia Campus Nature Challenge: A Collaborative Citizen Science Initiative For Biodiversity Conservation And Environmental Awareness

Universiti Sains Malaysia Campus Nature Challenge: A Collaborative Citizen Science Initiative For Biodiversity Conservation And Environmental Awareness

Instagram data for validating Nothofagus pumilio distribution mapping in the Southern Andes: A novel ground truthing approach

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