January 4 Update - Progress on 2022 Targets

We looked earlier (Dec 31) on last years data and how 2022 has more observations than any year in the Ohio Odonata Society database. This is a nice thing to reflect on a bit. But, what's the impact? We know the top counties continue to do well. What about our target counties?

Early in the 2022 year, I put together a map of 2022 targets (see the Mar 22 blog), this followed similar reviews in 2020 and 2021. Target counties have some combination of low numbers in total observations, recent species recorded, etc. This is shown (above map) for the state by county, with darker shading indicating greater need relative to other counties in our data. 23 counties were prioritized, with special focus on Henry, Seneca, Belmont, Noble, and Meigs.

Now that the season is complete, this map has been amended to show this years trends. Counties that have the up-arrow had a 10+ percent increase in observations over the survey average (2017-2021). Counties with the down-arrow failed to get within 10 percent of the survey average. The middle ground being those counties where observations were fairly level with survey years, these counties have the long-dash.

We have 59 counties with increases in observations, 14 level, 15 with decreases. No surprises with that since 2022 was a record year for observations. The target counties (green) follow the same trends. 16 target counties had increases in 2021 observations, 2 target counties were basically level with previous survey years, 5 target counties had decreases relative to survey. It seems like we did pretty good, the weaker performance was in the NW (where I usually try to target!)

A couple additional data points are included. The block o indicates those counties where we have new high annual total of observations. The block s indicates those counties where we have a new high number of species recorded in a year. As expected, it was easier to get observations than increase the species count, but we did pretty good. Every county now has at least 600 observations, so this measure will require a new target. Every County now has at least 50 species recorded, but we still have 17 counties below the target of 60 species. We did get 3 counties moved up a level - Preble (61), Harrison (62), and Lawrence (60).

This looks like progress. There will be a new set of target counties - on to 2023.

Posted on Ιανουάριος 04, 2023 0935 ΜΜ by jimlem