Uploading natural history observations

For more than 40 years I’ve been maintaining a database of my natural history observations and I have recently began uploading these data to iNaturalist. I am doing this year by year, starting with the most recent years, since more recent records are generally in better shape, having digital Latitude and Longitude co-ordinates, accuracy values, habitat, and other information available.

Using the iNaturalist upload tool I have concatenated fields in my personal records database (called MJOALL), which is maintained in MS Access, and uploaded the records to iNaturalist, with the databased information added to the Notes field. Once uploaded these records are iNaturalist “casual” grade observations since they are not supported by photo or audio recording documentation. More than 100,000 of my natural history observations have been uploaded to iNaturalist.

I am also dispersing my personal herbarium of 20,000+ vascular plant specimens as well as other natural history collections (Odonata, Unionidae, terrestrial Gastropoda, and other taxa) to a variety of museums and herbaria (most to the Canadian Museum of Nature). I am photographing some of the collections donated to various collections and uploading the photos to iNaturalist. In addition I have been scanning 35 mm slides and uploading the digital images to help document iNaturalist observations.

My goal is to have as many of my personal natural history observations as possible documented by iNaturalist observations, so the information will be accessible to others who wish to use the data for research and conservation purposes.

Posted on Απρίλιος 13, 2023 0740 ΜΜ by michael_oldham