While iNaturalist is super-good at recording occurrence of 'interesting species' and species lists for particular areas, it can often be difficult to decipher what's actually common in a particular area/time of year, i.e., what you would see on the ground when you go there. And I am thinking that with climate change etc., we may in the future want to know more about what is or was common at a particular site at a particular time than what is or was unusual, or rare, or just of particular interest at that site.
So as a very impromptu experiment in using iNaturalist to record 'what you see', I documented all of the plant species that were readily visible when I made a short trek to "Piggy Mt" yesterday (Oct 30, 2022). Most of this area burned to the ground during the "Spryfield Fire" in the spring of 2009 and is still regenerating.
I wanted to do this without creating a new Project, so as not to increase 'Project Clutter' (I am quite guilty of that); so I am doing it with a combination of (i) tags to ID broad habitat or plant community types and (ii) this journal post. 'Will see how it works. I also included with many of the species records, habitat pics, something I like to do routinely.
An issue: I couldn't place a simple map in the journal post. But I can post a URL to the first recorded observation. The 3rd photo on this species record is a map of the routes with 5 plant community types indicated:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140580046
Plant Communities, Tag, & Link to list of species
Under the "Observations" section below I have given one record from each of the 5 habitat-Plant Community types.
Some thoughts having completed the exercise
Piggy Mt. is visited fairly frequently by naturalists, but there had been very few observation recorded on iNaturalist: only 7 observations/6 species; those were: Broom Crowberry (1 obs), Jack Pine (2) white throated sparrow (1), two mushroom species (2 obs) & British Soldier Lichen (1). Of those 7 observations 4 were mine (so I wasn't making much effort to record 'what's there'); 6 of the observations were made 2017-2020.
One observation, of Jack Pine, was dated 2007, this by Burkhard Plache, entered on iNaturalist in 2017, see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5966749. It's an important one because that was pre-fire. So his photos illustrate what the site looked like not long before it burned. (Burkhard recently died as a result of a tragic swimming/storm wave event; he knew the Backlands well and introduced many to the area myself included.)
Was it worthwhile to do this exercise?
I think so if one wanted to answer the question- what are some common plants at Piggy Mt.?
It took me about 4 hours to enter all of the records and write this post.
Formalizing my observations forced me to look a little closer than I would have normally. That resulted in (i) my recognizing the presence of the invasive Alder Buckthorn (to be confirmed), and (ii) my looking closer at the birches than I would have otherwise. It was difficult to assign most of the birches definitively to one of Paper Birch and Grey Birch, and I suspect most are hybrids. Well that's a hypothesis. But now I will look more closely at birches at other times of year and in other areas of the Backlands... are apparent hybrids prevalent in certain habitat types, and the pure types in others?
Also, I realize I had missed recording at least one common species: teaberry, at least I think it was. So I should keep the lists open, by using the same tags in future. I haven't used tags much in the past; I think they are really helpful in compiling lists for particular areas or exercises.
I did this project and wrote this post mostly for myself - I have a need of "little projects", just to make such walks interesting and make me more observant - but I would welcome any comments. I am still learning how to use iNaturalist effectively.
