Citizen Science Data: iNaturalist Observations in the ArcGIS Living Atlas

Did you know that iNaturalist Observations (opens in a new tab) are available in ESRI’s Living Atlas? This massive citizen science dataset is updated monthly, is filterable, and can be added to your GIS project.  The observations are considered research grade (opens in a new tab) meaning the data must meet 5 requirements: evidence (photo), identify the subject (Genus and species), include a GPS point, date, and who recorded the data.

Below, I compared the iNaturalist data (39,209 records in green) to the Nature’s Notebook (opens in a new tab) data (608,000 records in orange) for Liriodendron tulipifera.  Nature’s Notebook records are tied to an institution’s location and are recording phenology over many years, whereas, the iNaturalist location is in proximity to an isolated observations. Both data sets are fantastic and publicly available that provide a spatial and temporal context for researchers.