"Flora of Russia" on iNaturalist

Alexey P. Seregin

doi:10.15468/8p9c6u

"Flora of Russia" on iNaturalist

Citation

Seregin A P (2021). "Flora of Russia" on iNaturalist. Version 1.5. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Metadata dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/8p9c6u accessed via GBIF.org on 2024-12-13.

Description

The "Flora of Russia" project on iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flora-of-russia?tab=about) was launched 09 Jan 2019. It brought together professional scientists and amateur naturalists from all over the country. Over 16,000 people were involved in the data collection.

As of 22 September 2021, the participants accumulated ca. 1,475,000 photo observations of 7,544 species of the Russian flora. This constitutes the largest dataset of open spatial data on the country’s biodiversity and a leading source of data on the current state of the national flora. About 89.6% of all project data are available under free licences (CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-NC) through "iNaturalist Research-grade Observations" dataset (https://doi.org/10.15468/ab3s5x).

The "Flora of Russia" project on iNaturalist consists of:

1) The old project "Flora of Russia" (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flora-of-russia), which includes verified observations and consists of 85 regional portals. The main page is not working due to extensive data growth.

2) "New Flora of Russia" (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/new-flora-of-russia-novaya-flora-rossii). This is "flat" collection project without a regional structure. Ouworked as a fast simple substitute for the old project.

3) Three scoreboards with the statistics by the regions: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/stats-for-fl-orus-i, https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/stats-for-fl-orus-ii, https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/stats-for-fl-orus-iii

4) "Flora of Russia: lost-and-found" (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flora-rossii-poteryashki-flora-of-russia-lost-and-found). This page includes ca. 200-300 verified observations that did not accidentally get into the regional portals due to technical problems of the shapefiles

5) Backlog of the "Flora of Russia" (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flora-of-russia-needs-id-backlog). This project includes either unidentified or unverified observations.

6) "Gray zone" (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/flora-of-russia-gray-zone) This project includes observations of cultivated plants and rejected data, i.e. observations that do not meet formal quality criteria.

7) "Flora of Russia" piggy bank (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/kopilka-flory-rossii-uchim-mashinu). This is a dataset on 300 candidate species for inclusion in the next model of automatic identification.

Purpose

The project "Flora of Russia", which includes all verified ("research-grade") observations of vascular plants from the country, was launched by the Moscow University team on 9 Jan 2019 to support data collection for the "Atlas of the Russian flora" (Seregin et al. 2020). During the first 20 months, the number of identified and verified iNaturalist observations of vascular plants from Russia increased 68-fold and the number of involved users increased 10-fold.

Sampling Description

Study Extent

Users can select the location for their observations themselves.

Sampling

The standard procedure of sampling is described on iNaturalist in the form of 17 paragraphs in the "Observations" section of the help page (last revised 8 Sep 2020 by Sam Kieschnick).

Quality Control

Data quality control is necessary for maintaining a high quality of records within a dataset. In the "Flora of Russia" project description, there is a well-structured, detailed and constantly improving section with recommendations for users in Russian. Apart from the general information (including short videos about iNaturalist and a description of available research tools of the portal), there are two particularly important sections, i.e. "Recommendations for new users" and "Recommendations for event curators". Both sections provide detailed instructions for the user on what, how and where to create a good-quality observation on iNaturalist. However, many users are not familiar with these guidelines. This imposes a certain responsibility on the identifiers and the project curators, who act as data stewards. The most important and/or frequently occurring issues are listed below. For each project on iNauralist, at least one or two curators should be assigned to review the uploaded observations and make comments, if necessary. The most frequent mistakes are: low-quality or wrong-angle photos, observations of cultivated plants without a relevant indication, either unintentional or intentional duplication of the same observation, unintentional merging of numerous observations into a single one, lack of date or location of an observation, lack of any original identification (at least a coarse one), upload of copyright media. In some cases, an inaccurate location for an observation shows up automatically, caused by specific GPS settings on the smartphone or camera. We report these issues to observers for further manual correction or mark such observations as "location is not accurate". We highly recommend georeferencing using the "GPS only" mode instead of either "GPS plus mobile networks" and "mobile networks only". The latter two options may shift the observation's georeference to the nearest mobile tower instead of the actual observer's location. Additionally, all records with positional accuracy exceeding 50,000 m were marked as having inaccurate location on 25 Sep 2020 and reported to users in the project journal post. Suspicious positional accuracy of 0, 1 or 2 metres recorded in thousands of observations is an artifact set up automatically during the uploading of observations by the devices. Another difficult and common problem is the separation of cultivated plants from garden escapes (naturalised or casual). Cultivated plants may be well recognisable and could reach "research grade" rapidly. We ask experts and project curators to double-check "research-grade" observations to detect plants growing only in cultivation. A well-designed and useful feature in iNaturalist is the possibility to call for attention of a specific user using the "@" prefix (for example, @krestov). This is very important for maintaining the appropriate quality as experts may respond and help in identification. Undoubtedly, the data quality depends on the quality of the uploaded photographs and field experience of the users. We ask project curators to post links to regional checklists, field guides and illustrated atlases for interested naturalists in the project description. Constant quality control is especially important during various events such as bioblitzes or mandatory student practices. As their numerous participants mostly lack experience in collecting biodiversity data through iNaturalist, the work of curators and teachers should be constant during the whole period of these events.

Method steps

Complete description of the project and current state of the data is available as a datapaper published in Biodiversity Data Journal and available at https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e59249

Additional info

For a number of years, Russian professional and amateur biologists were using Internet-based national networking systems of the georeferenced data collection for birds, invertebrates and plants. However, unlike iNaturalist, they usually does not allow data export nor is these data included in the GBIF, since photos and other data lack licence indications. In addition, contributing observations to these platforms requires more effort from the members. After digitisation of the nation's second largest herbarium (Seregin 2018), the Moscow University team launched a public awareness campaign to support community-generated data collection for plants. We decided not to spend budget on our own crowd-sourcing system, but to use and promote the international iNaturalist platform as suitable for data collection in Russia with a number of efficient tools and a global community.

Taxonomic Coverages

Tracheophyta
rank: phylum

Geographic Coverages

Russia

Bibliographic Citations

Seregin AP, Bochkov DA, Shner JV, Garin EV, Pospelov IN, Prokhorov VE, Golyakov PV, Mayorov SR, Svirin SA, Khimin AN, Gorbunova MS, Kashirina ES, Kuryakova OP, Bolshakov BV, Ebel AL, Khapugin AA, Mallaliev MM, Mirvoda SV, Lednev SA, Nesterkova DV, Zelenova NP, Nesterova SA, Zelenkova VN, Vinogradov GM, Biryukova OV, Verkhozina AV, Zyrianov AP, Gerasimov SV, Murtazaliev RA, Basov YM, Marchenkova KYu, Vladimirov DR, Safina DB, Dudov SV, Degtyarev NI, Tretyakova DV, Chimitov DG, Sklyar EA, Kandaurova AN, Bogdanovich SA, Dubynin AV, Chernyagina OA, Lebedev AV, Knyazev MS, Mitjushina IYu, Filippova NV, Dudova KV, Kuzmin IV, Svetasheva TYu, Zakharov VP, Travkin VP, Magazov YO, Teploukhov VYu, Efremov AN, Deineko OV, Stepanov VV, Popov ES, Kuzmenckin DV, Strus TL, Zarubo TV, Romanov KV, Ebel AL, Tishin DV, Arkhipov VYu, Korotkov VN, Kutueva SB, Gostev VV, Krivosheev MM, Gamova NS, Belova VA, Kosterin OE, Prokopenko SV, Sultanov RR, Kobuzeva IA, Dorofeev NV, Yakovlev AA, Danilevsky YV, Zolotukhina IB, Yumagulov DA, Glazunov VA, Bakutov VA, Danilin AV, Pavlov IV, Pushay ES, Tikhonova EV, Samodurov KV, Epikhin DV, Silaeva TB, Pyak AI, Fedorova YA, Samarin ES, Shilov DS, Borodulina VP, Kropocheva EV, Kosenkov GL, Bury UV, Mitroshenkova AE, Karpenko TA, Osmanov RM, Kozlova MV, Gavrilova TM, Senator SA, Khomutovskiy MI, Borovichev EA, Filippov IV, Ponomarenko SV, Shumikhina EA, Lyskov DF, Belyakov EA, Kozhin MN, Poryadin LS, Leostrin AV (2020) "Flora of Russia" on iNaturalist: a dataset. Biodiversity Data Journal 8: e59249 - https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.8.e59249
Seregin AP, Bochkov DA, Shner JV, Garin EV, Mayorov SR, Goliakov PV, Bolshakov BV, Prokhorov VE, Mallaliev MM, Vinogradov GM, Ebel AL, Kashirina ES, Biryukova OV, Kuryakova OP, Mirvoda SV, Khimin AN, Murtazaliev RA, Zelenkova VN, Dudov SV, Gorbunova MS, Gerasimov SV, Ebel AL, Travkin VP, Chernyagina OA, Razina EA, Zyryanov AP, Tretyakova DV, Lednev SA, Teploukhov VY, Kuzmenckin DV, Krivosheev MM, Popov ES, Sultanov RR, Basov YM, Dudova KV, Tishin DV, Yakovlev AA, Danilevsky YV, Pospelov IN, Kandaurova AN, Kutueva SB, Yumagulov DA, Samodurow KV, Smirnova LY, Bury UV, Yusupov VE, Epikhin DV, Repina TG, Boginsky EI, Dubynin AV, Korobkov AV, Nesterkova DV, Poluyanov AV, Danilin AV, Efremov AN, Pozhidaeva LV, Verkhozina AV, Postnikov YA, Linnik EA, Kobuzeva IA, Prokopenko SV, Shumikhina EA, Kushunina MA, Kuzmin IV, Rasran LM, Sukhova DV, Popov AV (2020) Flora of Russia on iNaturalist: big data on biodiversity of a big country. Zhurnal Obshchei Biologii 81 (3): 223‑233. [In Russian] - https://doi.org/10.31857/S0044459620030070

Contacts

Alexey P. Seregin
originator
position: Dr. Sci.
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Leninskie Gory 1
Moscow
119234
RU
Telephone: +7 (926) 369-9935
email: botanik.seregin@gmail.com
homepage: https://istina.msu.ru/profile/Allium/
userId: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=34fmTxcAAAAJ

Alexey P. Seregin
metadata author
position: Dr. Sci.
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Leninskie Gory 1
Moscow
119234
RU
Telephone: +7 (926) 369-9935
email: botanik.seregin@gmail.com
homepage: https://istina.msu.ru/profile/Allium/
userId: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=34fmTxcAAAAJ

Alexey P. Seregin
administrative point of contact
position: Dr. Sci.
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Leninskie Gory 1
Moscow
119234
RU
Telephone: +7 (926) 369-9935
email: botanik.seregin@gmail.com
homepage: https://istina.msu.ru/profile/Allium/
userId: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=34fmTxcAAAAJ