Title
Colorado Springs Participation in the City Nature Challenge 2019
Presenter:
Kim King, Recreation and Administration Manager
Karen Palus, Director - Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services
Body
Summary:
The City Nature Challenge is a friendly competition between cities all over the world to see which one can observe the most nature over a four-day period. This year's fourth annual Challenge will expand to more than 160 cities across the globe including, for the first time, the City of Colorado Springs. Kicking off April 26 at 12:01 a.m. in each time zone, the Challenge runs through April 29, 11:59 p.m. The multi-city, global event calls on current and aspiring citizen scientists, nature and science fans, and people of all ages and science backgrounds to observe and submit pictures of wild plants, animals and fungi using the free app iNaturalist. Identification of photographed species will be crowdsourced through the online community April 30 through May 5 and results will be announced on May 6. The city with the most observations wins, although everyone wins through new knowledge and the chance to explore the natural world!
Previous Council Action:
N/A
Background:
Started in 2016 for the first-ever Citizen Science Day, the citizen science teams at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and California Academy of Sciences dreamed up the City Nature Challenge as a fun way to capitalize on their home cities' friendly rivalry and hold a citizen science event around urban biodiversity. The first City Nature Challenge was an eight-day competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, engaging residents and visitors in documenting nature to better understand urban biodiversity. Over 20,000 observations were made by more than 1000 people in a one-week period, cataloging approximately 1600 species in each location, including new records for both areas.
This year, the Challenge is expanding, and organizers estimate that 750,000 observ...
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