Help Validate Observations

Verification and validation of bioblitz observations is a critical step in the process of creating a biodiversity database that institutions and researchers trust when doing their analyses, making management recommendations or policies. All it takes is a handful of people who confirm that the observation is correct and it can get counted as “research grade."

We need people who are comfortable identifying species to help review the uploaded CNC observations to suggest species names and/or verify those that are entered are correct, and make suggestions for those needing identifications.

If you want to help, please sign up on iNaturalist.org, join our project, and request that you get notified when Boston City Nature Challenge observations get posted. You can choose the taxa that are of greatest interest to you if you wish. You can also consider hosting a City Nature Challenge ID-a-thon with some friends to collaborate on validations!

You can provide enormous value to our community by helping to identify observations. Try checking the ID Please section, searching for observations without identifications, or searching for observations that still need to get down to species. Or search filters allow a bunch of different ways to search, so play around! You can also subscribe to particular taxa and to places, if you specialize in one group or place. Check the lower left corner of our taxon and place pages and you'll see "Subscribe" links to click. Subscribing means you'll receive updates when people make observations of your taxon or in your place of interest. Researchers interested in downloading iNat data can use the export tool. All the licensed, research-grade observations are also indexed by GBIF, where you can search and download them using their tools.