The results are in!
A big thank you to everyone who participated and helped make this year yet another successful one. Philly's official numbers at cut-off were:
Observations: 19,030
Species: 2,215
Observers: 876
We didn't do as well as last year but we had a late surge that made it very, very close after not looking like we were going to get anywhere near last year's numbers. Good job, everyone. For comparison, these were last year's results at the cut-off time:
Observations: 19,637
Species: 2,219
Observers: 966
As you can see, it was very close, but we always want to do better on our total observer numbers and try to get past 1000 next year.
And while not officially a competition again this year, the numbers put us at 16th in observations, 19th in species, and 13th in observers out of about 450 participating cities. Well done, Philly! For comparison,, this is how we placed last year: 11th in observations, 12th in species, and 11th in observers.
And despite not being a competition, we take a little bit of pride in that we beat NYC in all 3 categories. And as usual, DC smoked us again with 38k observations, nearly 3k species, and 2112 participants. As we always say, we'll get them next year! We did better than Boston in species, but they got ahead of us in observations and observers.
Ever since we started participating in the CNC, globally, Cape Town usually runs away with most observations and species. That was not to be this year, with La Paz, Bolivia recording numbers never before seen during the CNC (and it was so far above previous years' highs). They had 137k observations, 5320 species, and 4296 participants! Those are some really impressive numbers. If anybody has any ideas on how we can replicate La Paz's numbers here, we'd be all ears. After all, the more people who are engaged with nature, the better we can be at protecting it for all of us.
Across all cities participating, the global CNC had the following amazing numbers with over 1.5 million observations made in 4 days:
Observations: 1,694,877
Species: 50,176+, including more 2,244 than rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 67,220
Thanks to every one of the 876 people who added observations in the Greater Philadelphia Area. And to the 725 identifiers, thank you! A special shoutout to our top participants:
Observers: @srall , @jameshoughton, @annebekker, @seahound, @mattparr, @georgemushkal, @allisonrhoughton, @debbeer, @that_hippie_chick
Species: @annebekker, @srall, @jameshoughton, @mattparr, @seahound, @maryah, @that_hippie_chick, @allisonrhoughton, @mark_fallon
Identifiers: @maryah, @efalquet, @mbwildlife, @conboy, @naturejeanne, @julietrav24, @brianwhite, @ciafre, @choess, @mark_fallon
And just like last year, an extra special shoutout to @srall for participating with both Philly and NYC. Sara did two days in NYC and 2 days in Philly and she was number 1 in observations in both NYC and Philly! And she was well ahead of the 2nd place finisher in both places! She also tallied 416 species in Philly in just 2 days! We are very lucky to have you continue to join us, Sara.
And a shout out to @annebekker as well! She was the first person to cross 400 species during our CNC last year. This year, she outdid herself with 475 species! Those are some really impressive numbers. Well done, Anne! We are hoping for 500 next year.
And big thanks to @maryah for all the identifications! I know my species numbers would be a lot lower than they are without the help. Thank you!
One last shoutout to @jameshoughton and @allisonrhoughton! This was their first year participating in the Philly CNC having relocated from Boston and they really helped us out and they both were in the top 10 in both species and observations.
Here's a cool graphic made by the global CNC organizers highlighting the global competition. CNC 2022 infographic
I'll try to make a similar one for our region soon, so please let me know if you found anything cool either while observing or IDing.
Well done and congratulations all!
Comentarios
Thanks @navin_sasikumar once again for coordinating this great effort and for sharing this report!
Thank you for organizing this! And thank you to everyone who participated! Even if we didn't do as well as last year, it was still great fun and I learned a lot :)
Thank you @navin_sasikumar for organizing, cheering us on, and creating the target lists! Terrific effort!!
Too much on my plate to play this year (I thought) but trying to clean up that target list is too much fun, so I there I went. Thanks again for your efforts, @navin_sasikumar ! Given the diversity of habitats within our CNC area, with a little strategizing next year we should be able to trounce other NE cities - even DC - at least on species counts.
Thanks, everyone!
@annebekker DC is still going to be tough to beat on species counts, I think. They also have twice our area - 14,412 sq km compared to our 7,726 sq km. They stretch from the bay all the way to the Shenandoah National Park. I think we beat all other North East cities on species counts though.
Here's all the species DC got this year that we didn't: http://targets.cncphilly.org/?a_project_id=city-nature-challenge-2022-washington-dc-metro-area&b_project_id=city-nature-challenge-2022-greater-philadelphia-area
@navin_sasikumar Oh. Wait, what? Well then, it would be nice if we could use mileage radii instead of adjacent counties to determine our CNC area. With 14412 km sq (without looking at a map) we could take in bayshore, Poconos (at least the "foothills"), I think we'd make it to the Jersey shore, etc. That would make a huge difference. :-) And (now I'm just being childish) just glimpsed that DC list - I know where 14 of the first 15 plants are in our area.
@annebekker Using mileage radius would make it pretty hard to communicate CNC area boundaries to participants. Most cities use some existing region or a conglomeration of counties. For example, DC uses the Washington Metropolitan Area, SF uses some form of the Bay Area, NYC uses only the 5 boroughs.
I initially signed us up for only the county of Philadephia, but then we went with our existing borders instead. A case could be made for expanding our region to the Philadelphia Metro Area or the Philadelphia Combined Statistical Area minus any counties in Delaware since they have their own CNC region already. But that means extra organization to get people from all those places invovled, plus we won't be able to compare our results year over year. That's not to say we shouldn't do it, we certainly can if there is enough interest.
And once again @navin_sasikumar has left himself off the top observations and species lists, above, even though he was second in each. A big shout-out to our organizer.
@navin_sasikumar Got it; also I would never want to suggest anything that would impose more work on you. (Also, I didn't notice what @bugsandbirds pointed out above. Congrats, Navin.)
Thank you, @bugsandbirds! I appreciate it. It's pretty weird writing my own name in a post I'm creating, so I'm going to keep leaving it out. :) I'm just happy to see so many people participating and having fun.
Thanks, @annebekker! Regarding the new counties, it's not that much more work in the long run; mostly just a fair bit of initial work getting partner organizations in each of the new counties. We've talked about having county captains to help partner orgs in each county, but haven't had the need to do that yet.
The other challenge of course against DC is their southern position, some of those plants they get are in our region but not yet visible or identifiable in April.. Just my own 2 cents, personally I tend to like our current area as bordering counties, seems like DC is an outlier in the east in their expansiveness, especially given NY only uses city proper. Would be nice to get some standardization by area, population etc. among the bigger cities.. Theoretically, I wonder if maybe places like Allentown-Bethlehem, Lancaster etc could want to participate independently on a smaller town level if they don't already.
@navin_sasikumar .. also, as a sub category would be interesting to track results just within city propers against DC, NY, LA etc. as there is much pride regarding our urban greenspace / habitat in addition to the region as a whole. Is this currently tracked? I'd hesitate to ask for more effort from you and the organizers tho.
@danefroymson Boston is pretty big too. NYC might actually be the outlier in that they stick to just the 5 boroughs. I think it kind of gets tricky to standardize among the bigger cities, but I do have a results spreadsheet from CNC central with the areas and population of each participating city. We can sort and manipulate that to see how we compare with similar-sized cities. I can share that with you (or anyone else here) if you are interested. I also have this spreadsheet from a few years ago comparing us with other major US citites (not just CNC data): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FFznlBXzDfvNd_y1aDfwg-rljGSh5tqVhsgcrrDtRhk/edit?usp=sharing
As for tracking results in the city proper, it should be fairly easy to do on our own, if we can define what the city proper is for each city. That's the nice thing about iNat compared to eBird.
We had more PA cities this year. The new ones were Scranton, North Central PA, and South Central PA. Chester County is the tricky one for us since it is traditionally included in the Philadelphia Metro area. We get asked if we plan to add them to our area, but then there are also people there who want to do their own but haven't done it yet.
@navin_sasikumar The urban ecologist in me was actually somewhat disappointed (even though it's in my interest for purposes of the "challenge" right now, as I often have to work any CNC participation around obligations in surrounding counties) when the boundaries were expanded beyond Philly proper. I'm actually less interested in comparing ourselves against other cities (except for the competition aspect - but no way to "standardize" it I don't think) than in tracking changes in species diversity within our city boundaries from year to year.
It's theoretically possible to connect those changes to particular initiatives, use them to help target restoration efforts, gauge what we've gained (or not) through such an effort somewhere, etc. (Bias toward "charismatic" species notwithstanding.) On another note I'm certain that we're losing biodiversity in some spots I've spent time in over the last decade +, but iNat could help supply data that makes this more than just anecdotal (I guess running localized bioblitzes if anyone has time would be the best way to do this sort of thing). Anyway it would be great to see data just for Philly (past and future).
@navin_sasikumar just kicking around thoughts, not fighting for any position here, sorry to belabor..
Ultimately I agree with @annebekker that potential data supporting/facilitating research and conservation efforts is far more important than the competion aspect of this. And the competition aspect is just motivation to connect people with nature anyway.
But I can imagine a loosely suggested area range parameter (eg. 1000-2000 sq.mile or whatever) or suggested area max could help each city determine if their best fit is surrounding counties, metro area etc.
And if there was interest, a sub-category using strict city municipal boundaries, regardless of whether the city and county boundaries match, could be another type of standardization and impetus for interesting data sets.
I don't think we can do much to standardize it for the CNC, but we could definitely pull up subsets of the CNC data on our own that are limited to just particular areas we are interested in. For example, here is the 2022 CNC data for
Just Philadelphia: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2983&project_id=122609&verifiable=any
Just DC: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=67090&project_id=122478&verifiable=any
We can do the same for other regions or years too. We can also do 'Bounding Boxes' centered on a city and with equal areas and get data for that as well. iNaturalist is pretty powerful that way.
And I totally agree that while the competition aspect is fun, connecting people with nature and tracking biodiversity is the goal. I've always wanted to do localized group bioblitzes separate from the CNC but I haven't gotten around to it. But I tend to revisit the same spots in NW Philly over and over again, so I'm probably collecting some pretty good data that way. Just got to wait a few more years for it to be really useful!
Añade un comentario