03 de agosto de 2022

Introducing what is and how to use iNaturalist on national TV

7 AM and I am meeting Rita and Miguel, a journalist an her cameraman for a short piece on iNaturalist.
I am taking out my smartphone to show how to navigate through the app in the process of getting a record outdoors. And, obviously, my binoculars. just because bird post-breeding migration is starting and I am at Quinta do Lago, a well known birding location.

For some reason I feel excited.
I have been interviewed on how and why I got involved with iNaturalist before.
Diana Marques interviewed several people on an exploratory study on citizen science engagement for her Master degree from the Minho University, and I was included. (But I haven't read any results).
Later on, I participated on a conversation on citizen science at the Centro de Ciência Viva do Algarve, chatting with Joana Andrade (from SPEA, the Portuguese Society for the Study of Birds), Cristina Veiga-Pires (from CCVFaro - a science museum) and other folks about general aspects of citizen science, and eBird and iNaturalist in particular.
But now this was reaching a wider audience, and not feeling very comfortable with addressing cameras and journalists, I thought it was a nice way to give back to this amazing project and its community.
This team is from Biosfera, a long-running tv show from the public network, well-known for doing a good job on bringing many issues related with the environment and biodiversity up to the general public.
We walked along and try to show some of the biodiversity of the Ria Formosa Natural Park, some of the natural elements of it we could still find at this hot time of the year. Later on, I answered some questions.

I hope the final result helps bring iNaturalist to more people, and more people more into nature literacy.

I will update this bulletin with a link to the show itself, which will air in late September or early October.

Publicado el agosto 3, 2022 09:57 MAÑANA por joaotiagotavares joaotiagotavares | 5 comentarios | Deja un comentario

04 de marzo de 2021

iNATURALIST 10K on #WorldWildlifeDay 2021!

It was Jacques Yves-Costeau's fault. And Félix Rodrigues de la Fuente’s too. It was watching their documentaries in the early 1980s that I became fascinated by living things, and by their diversity. To know their names and to know how to tell them apart. In the University, some friends (Octávio Mateus, Catarina Azinheira or Dinis Geraldes, was one or all of them?) showed me their field notebooks, and I easily gave in to the need not only to know, but to record everything I saw, all the living things I could find. And then, lists, something that came out naturally, I'm not sure why. I become obsessed with listing all the birds and other creatures, and more. I tell regular people I am a biologist, and I biologists who do not understand why it fascinates me to know one more scientific name that I am a naturalist, an old school one. A few decades have passed and iNaturalist appeared. A tool FOR SCIENCE AND CONSERVATION: here I can record what I see, and people (who know how to identify the things I don't know) help me to know more, more names, more characteristics, to know the distributions patterns and more, to acquaint myself with new forms of life. And there are many.
And images, which have always been part of me and of my relationship with the world, have always been an obsession, starting with drawing and moving to amateur (record) photography, now has a purpose. Now, I can use my photos to record, in space and time, the living beings that are always around us. Always, even when we neither see nor think about them.
And I keep inserting records and, without knowing how, there are TEN THOUSAND records. The 10.000th: a wild tulip, since in recent years botany has slowly emerged as an interest.
Of these 10K, 6787 records are identified to the species level, and only 4828 have been confirmed by experts and other naturalists.
These are only the first 10,000, I hope.
More than anything, I would like to thank the naturalists who contributed most to validate and identify my records: @valter (Valter Jacinto), @mjcorreia (prof. Maria João Correia), @mercantour, @maremimar (prof. Maria Emília Martins ) and @zaca (zacarias), are only the first 5 out of a total of 927 identifiers, to whom I owe a lot of appreciation).

Publicado el marzo 4, 2021 09:42 MAÑANA por joaotiagotavares joaotiagotavares | 1 observación | 2 comentarios | Deja un comentario

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