iNat Intro: Using iNat to Decide When to Hike
This is meant to be a resource to introduce my students to the site and to supplement an "Intro to iNat" program I'm giving. If you're already an active iNat user, you probably don't need this (but if you're planning to do a program of your own or are trying to brainwash friends and neighbors, feel free to link people here).
Let's use the iNaturalist website ( https://www.inaturalist.org/home ) to decide when we're likely to see our favorite wildflowers.
These Blue-Eyed Marys were so cool!! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/108975261
I want to see them again. When should go hiking?
My original observation was made on April 15 (see the "observed" field to the right of the observation photo), so sometime in April is a good choice, but unusually warm or cold spring weather can affect bloom times.
Let's get more information. Click the "Collinsia verna" at the top of the observation and it will take you to the "About" page for that taxon. Now look at the "Charts" to the right of the taxon photo and from "Seasonality", you can see that most observations of this species are posted between March and June. Now click the "Map" tab below the species photo and you'll see that these observations are being reported from multiple states:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/116349-Collinsia-verna
We're interested in Kentucky. Can we narrow our results?
To the right of the species name at the top of the page, there's a small "Filter by Place" option. Click it and type in "Boone County, KY" and then select it from the list. Now go back down to the "Charts" area and click the "Flowers and Fruits" tab. If you hover over any of the lines with your mouse, you'll get a note explaining what's represented. We can see that what's seen in our area agrees with elsewhere: peak flowering season is in April.
Can we get more information about specific dates?
Click the "View All" button under "Total Observations" and above the "Charts" area. That will show all the Boone County observations. Now, above the first observation, click "List" to switch from grid view to list view. Click the "Observed" column of the list to switch between sorted newest to oldest or vice versa. You can now scroll down the list to see the specific dates observations were made on. From this list, it looks like for most years, mid to late April is the best time to see these in bloom.
If it's early April and you're trying to decide whether it's time yet to make a trip to the park, look at Kentucky observations of the species in grid view. The default is that they're sorted by "Date Observed". Thus, if you do a search to check from time to time, you can see when people start to post lots of observations of flowering individuals, and then it's probably time for a hike:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?order_by=observed_on&place_id=26&preferred_place_id=1&taxon_id=116349
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