iNaturalist
Website and app for sharing biodiversity observations / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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iNaturalist is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe.[3][4] iNaturalist may be accessed via its website or from its mobile applications.[5][6] iNaturalist includes an automated species identification tool, and users further assist each other in identifying organisms from photographs. As of 9 July 2024[update], iNaturalist users had contributed approximately 197,660,888 observations of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms worldwide, and 290,007 users were active in the previous 30 days.
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Type of site | Citizen science |
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Available in | 56[1] languages |
Area served | Worldwide |
Founder(s) |
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URL | inaturalist |
Commercial | No |
Registration | Optional |
Users | ![]() |
Launched | 2008; 16 years ago (2008) |
Current status | Active |
iNaturalist describes itself as "an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature", with its primary goal being to connect people to nature.[7] Although it is not a science project itself, iNaturalist is a platform for science and conservation efforts, providing valuable open data to research projects, land managers, other organizations, and the public.[7][8] It is the primary application for crowd-sourced biodiversity data in places such as Mexico, southern Africa, and Australia,[9][10][11] and the project has been called "a standard-bearer for natural history mobile applications."[12] Most of iNaturalist's software is open source.[13] Scientists have published more than 4,000 papers drawn from iNaturalist data sets and observations,[14] including descriptions of species new to science and rediscoveries of species so rarely seen they were feared extinct.