Celebrate Earth Day every single day by adding your sightings to iNaturalist - an easy-to-use and mobile-friendly app that adds your plant and animal finds into an important natural science database!
One of the world’s most popular nature apps, iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you. Get connected with a community of over a million scientists and naturalists who can help you learn more about nature! What’s more, by recording and sharing your observations, you’ll create research quality data for scientists working to better understand and protect nature. iNaturalist is a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
Connect with nature at the click of a button. Can’t identify that mushroom or butterfly? Take a photo, upload it, and iNaturalist’s identification software will recognize the plant or animal’s key features to give you a top list of identification selections. Scientists and naturalists will confirm your sighting.
Enter a dozen, a hundred or thousands of your photos - have fun adding to the greater knowledge of the natural world surrounding you!
Steps:
- Download the app.
- Create a login name and password.
- Click the “observe” button, take a photo or upload from your photos folder.
- Select the species name that matches with your identification and submit the location.
- Your sightings will be viewed by other subscribers, who will either confirm that you correctly identified the species or they’ll offer a new, correct identification.
If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to Ask a Naturalist on Cleveland Metroparks website or Facebook page.