Illinois Botanists Big Year 2017 Update 11/29/2017
It's nearly December and things are pretty brown and crunchy out there...or black and ashy if they've been fortunate enough to get a burn in this fall fire season. It's not too late to start or continue participating in the Illinois Botanists Big Year: grab some cadaver botany observations and start brushing up on your winter ID. One of my favorite things about iNaturalist is the huge repository of photos of plants all throughout the year. Not just their gaudy glamour shots!
Before we jump the gun and start running any stats for the 2017 contest, we need your help identifying and confirming observations. There are a staggering 9,394 observations made in 2017 so far still waiting to be identified. Here is a link to that Identify page, already filtered for 2017 observations in Illinois. Bookmark it! Help others' observations reach research grade by either agreeing with their identification or adding your own if it differs from theirs. Please only add or agree with an identification if you can personally identify it from the photo provided, don't just blindly hit Agree without confirming the ID... ;)
That link again: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=Plantae%2Cunknown&order_by=observed_on&place_id=35&d1=2017-01-01&d2=2017-12-31
I'll plan on tallying and announcing the results by the end of January. If you want to help out with that, comment below or shoot me a message. It would be cool to make some maps or look for interesting observations (e.g. beautiful photos, state or county records, weirdest, funniest), or to tabulate the data in different ways.
It's been a great year!
Links
Learn more about the Illinois Botanists Big Year (ILBBY) including the rules, current stats, and links to other states' stats
2016 ILBBY Results
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