A STEM educator's introduction to iNaturalist data in ArcGIS
Over the summer, Esri announced that the iNaturalist observations are now available in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World with over 800,000 naturalists who have recorded over 90 million observations spanning over 400,000 species! Founded in 2008, iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.
iNaturalist data in clustered hexbins loaded into the 3D Scene Viewer.
This truly amazing set of data is a hosted service is accessible as a layer through ArcGIS Living Atlas and is scheduled to be updated monthly with the newest observations from iNaturalist. It contains the research-grade observations, which have been reviewed and validated by other participants and naturalists within the iNaturalist community. In the future, the service will continue to grow and expand with the most current observations.
iNaturalist local point data in the 3D Scene Viewer.
For environmental science teachers, this resource provides raw data for analysis – add climatic, vegetative, or anthropocentric layers to better understand effects and interactions. Predator/prey, altered biomes, biodiversity, population ranges, density-diversity maps, studies, and so much nore are available.
iNaturalist data in the MapMaker.
Explore the map in:
- The ArcGIS Scene Viewer
- National Geographic MapMaker
- iNaturalist Explorer App (beta) - not shown above
If you are not yet an iNaturalist contributor, consider joining today. When you do, connect with me!