Use Case: iNaturalist Observations

This thread can be used to discuss and provide feedback to the use case on iNaturalist Observations.

How will the project information be managed when data from iNaturalist come from a specific bioblitz or project? For now this kind of information is not visible on GBIF.org yet, but it could be really useful to add it to the new data (or metadata) model as it would help finding occurrences from a given project. We have several ongoing discussions about this at the national level in France (and I already contacted the GBIF helpdesk about it) but I wondered what are your thoughts on this topic regarding the new data model.

3 Likes

Sophie this is a great question, this is something I also was trying to bring to the discussions on the local level in Ecuador, but there are many new tools that try to compete with each other, at least in my perspective, and not collaborating on the existing data.

iNaturalist for me is a great tool that has to be processed and added to metadata if there is going to be a Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

1 Like

Can iNaturalist add list of projects each record belongs too, in the data export it sends to GBIF. And what DwC field can be used for the same? @kueda

1 Like

We probably can… but for collection and umbrella projects it would not be performative, and also a bit meaningless since an observation appearing in one of those projects does not imply intentional participation in that project.

I defer to the GBIF folks on this. We have made DarwinCore Archives including traditional project observation data in the past, but we used a custom extension (i.e. a project_observations.csv file in the archive).

2 Likes

I defer to the GBIF folks on this. We have made DarwinCore Archives including traditional project observation data in the past, but we used a custom extension (i.e. a project_observations.csv file in the archive).

@mgrosjean do you think work with datasetName could be used in this context?

1 Like