During the four-day urban bioblitz, I chose to explore around campus. I thought it would be very interesting to see what kind of wildlife is around us every single day as we walk to and from classes. I found one tree outside the Aiken center that I had never noticed before, and due to the increase in rain, it had bloomed very rapidly! It was very pretty, and although no ID was added, I’m sure I will find out what species it is soon enough!
I had a very good experience using iNaturalist. I think it is very easy to use and it was fairly easy to join the TA group. I love using iNaturalist on my own time to identify plant or animal species that I think are cool. Unfortunately, for the bioblitz, I didn’t have a lot of time to get outside and observe many species because our watershed project was due, and I had to work on it. I may not have observed many species in the four days of the challenge, but I like to observe a lot of species on my own time using the app.
I found it very interesting that some cities that I perceive as very industrial with not a lot of nature were being ranked so high on the leaderboard. For example, New York is a very urban area and I always think of it not having a large or diverse population of plants or animals. However, they were ranked quite high (in hindsight, they have a lot of people, so this makes sense). The number of species observed in all of the cities, even Burlington, was also surprising to me. I guess I don’t really think of a city of having so many species within its border, but they do!
I think the City Nature Challege was a fun way to interact with the environment and the species we have been living in for the past two semesters.