Diario del proyecto City Nature Challenge 2024: Surrey BC

A shout-out to everyone who contributed this year. Some phenomenal observations and image captures that helped Surrey contribute to making Metro Vancouver the national lead at over 14,000 observation, beating Montreal by just over 20!

Metro Vancouver also ranked 33rd in North and South America as part of the international results.

I hope you'll continue to contribute throughout the year. the observations you make are integral to helping the City of Surrey in monitoring local biodiversity. As growth pressures increase and further pressure is put on the City's natural assets, community science efforts are a critical facet in well-informed land use planning.

Simply put, your data counts.

Looking forward to seeing the regulars and new iNaturalist enthusiasts join in again in 2025!

Sincerely,

Pamela Zevit RPBio
Biodiversity Conservation Planner
City of Surrey

We're getting down to the wire, just edging over 900 observations which is pretty awesome considering we have ~20 less observers than last year and a lot crappier weather this time around. And the ID's are still going strong which is great as having robust data is our real end goal for community science in Surrey.

For those tracking how we're doing regionally and nationally, Metro Vancouver is now leading across Canada, edging out Montreal by a mere 54 observations. Talk about east against west!

But there are still many hours to go, so we won't really know if the 'wet' coast came out on top nationally (for the first time ever) until cutoff tomorrow at 8:59 am.

So enjoy what's left of your Sunday night and stay tuned for the big reveal tomorrow from California.

A shout out to everyone taking the time to upload observations and especially all you dedicated folks helping with the IDs!

By the way, if you're checking in on the Metro Vancouver Regional project and how we're doing nationally, Metro is neck and neck with Montreal (12,884 to 12,900 respectively)! And we're well ahead of Calgary Metro Region and the GTA.
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-canada-2024-defi-nature-urbaine

Be proud of your/Surrey's contribution. Especially considering the weather we had this past weekend.

The wet coast rules!

I've just uploaded all my CNC observations and will be working the remaining time up until 9am May 5 to help with ID. We're creeping up to a 1000 observations for this year, so keep them coming if you still have observations to share :).

Please do help with the IDs, especially the fungi and audio recordings. Some families and genera can be tricky to tell apart (I am still getting stuck on Trametes versus Sterneum fungi). Fortunately iNaturalist is a welcoming learning environment filled with incredibly knowledgeable folks. So feel comfortable to tag curators and specialists and ask for help, and appreciate unsolicited help from others.

And as always, remember the recognition software in iNaturalist is a tool, but it's not perfect. Species like flies, worms and many invertebrates and fungi) can be especially hard to get down to family or genus, never mind species. Before going with something exotic that iNaturalist recommends, check the range map and think about the likelihood of it being that super rare organism with the closest occurrence in California or Florida, or Italy, versus a more common species that looks similar but isn't quite so exciting.

Looking forward to see what cool finds are waiting to hit research grade!

Hope everyone has been having fun this weekend! We were off to a slow start with the not so nice weather Friday-Saturday, but today and tomorrow are much more welcoming, so we're looking forward to further observations getting added for the coming week. We'll have a bunch of visual and audio uploads from Latimer Park, Keery Park and several local parks in west Cloverdale to add for the City of Surrey's account in the next few days so stay tuned.

Some interesting finds and gorgeous gems this year, proving once again the City Nature Challenge never disappoints!

Wow hats off to all you keeners out there already gathering observations on such a rainy day!

Here are some reminders as you begin collecting and adding observations:
• If you were out in the wee hours last night gathering owl calls or coyote yips, any observations collected at 12:01 am April 26 OUR TIME are valid as are observations collected by 11:59 pm April 29. Cool fact the CNC starts (and ends) FIRST in New Zealand and start (and ends) LAST in Hawaii.
• Any observations made within the City of Surrey boundary between April 26 and April 29 will automatically be added to our Surrey project and the broader Metro Vancouver Regional project– don't have to join the Surrey or Metro project to have your observations show up, and you don't need to add their observations to these projects to have them show up… you just need to make them and upload them to iNaturalist. *But joining individual projects is a nice way of showing direct support for your city :)
• All observations must be MADE between April 26 & April 29, but they can be uploaded later (but must be uploaded by May 6 at 9am OUR TIME to count)
• Identifications can happen throughout the full City Nature Challenge window, up until everyone's project results are pulled (they can keep happening afterwards of course, they just won’t count for the CNC!)
• PLEASE help us with data curation by:
o Marking non-wild organisms as captive/cultivated when making the observations, and
o If you see observations from our city that are clearly of captive or cultivated organisms, mark them as not wild in the Data Quality Assessment section of the observation – for others helping with identifications please do the same! *the Surrey CNC project is already set up to exclude humans, domestic dogs, domestic cats and most livestock. Please avoid adding house plants or captured images from your computer or TV.
• CNC central will pull every city’s or region's results on 6 May at 9AM our time – so whatever numbers (observations, species, identifiers, observers) are showing in our local project will be our final results. *Reminder for this year Surrey's data will be merged into the Metro Vancouver Regional project and added to national and international umbrella projects. If you want to track how we've done locally, check the Surrey CNC 2024 project, which we're running for local tracking and reporting purposes.

Hard to believe were only one two weeks away from our 5th CNC. Have you figured out which greenspace you plan to visit April 26-29? Or are you going to focus on your own backyard, or neighbourhood. Looking to join a local organized CNC event? Check out our CNC page www.surrey.ca/citynaturechallenge for where and when.

Wherever you pick for your biodiversity blitzing make your data count! Remember the 3-Ps: No people, pets or potted plants when collecting observations. Focus on wild plants, animals and fungi, native or not :).

Check in for CNC updates from the field from April 26-29 and contribute to refining ID's from April 30 to May 2.