Free Apps to Explore Biodiversity

 The following apps have been used by myself to explore the biodiversity around me. These apps are free to download and use. They contribute relevant data to the scientific community by allowing citizen scientists to report what they observe in the natural world around them. Citizen science are volunteers who participate in scientific studies by collecting data. This generates large data sets for scientific research, and it allows scientists to access data that covers a larger geographic area over longer periods of time. 

iNaturalist

iNaturalist is an online species repository brought to you by National Geographic and the California Academy of Scientists that collects data on species distribution. It is a citizen science project and social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists with a common goal of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity that exists across our globe. It is available as a mobile app which makes it quite useful. The platform allows users to capture images of flora and fauna using the camera on your phone. Users then upload the images they capture to the app (it helps to upload multiple images of the same organism at close range) and with the help of the artificial intelligence (AI), select the name of the organism that best matches the user's image.  The AI uses metadata from the picture and the picture itself to aid in selecting an appropriate list of possible organisms. It is helpful to read species descriptions when identifying your organism as there is much variation amongst species. In the collection of users on iNaturalist there are "identifiers" who are users well versed in identifying certain flora and fauna. These users aid in the correct identification of images so that each organism is identified correctly. One of the awesome features of iNaturalist is that "projects" can be created within the platform. These "projects" allow you to set geographic parameters so biodiversity can be measured within large or small geographic areas. The app is very easy to use which makes it a great tool for observing and identifying species. I would highly recommend this app for anyone who is interested in cataloging biodiversity. The app is available for both Apple and Android devices. 

BirdNET

BirdNET is an online repository for birdsongs. The mobile app allows you to record and identify birdsongs as you hear them. The AI analyzes your recordings to identify bird species using the song along with the location (using eBrid) from which you took the recording. Allowing the use of location services with the app increases the probability of a correct identification by narrowing the pool of possible species. The recordings are broken down into 1 second chunks and the AI analyzes those 1 second chunks and returns to the user a probability value for each bird species. The species with the highest probability in all chunks of data is most likely the bird present in the recording. In order to retrieve more accurate selections from the AI it is important to limit background noise and to limit recordings to one song. To record sound press the "Mic" button; this will start the spectrogram view. To end the recording press the "Pause" button. Afterwards, select a snippet of the recording by swiping along the spectrogram to select the sound you want the AI to analyze. Pressing analyze allows the AI to pool potential species with probability certainties.  BirdNET is really simple to use which make it very user friendly. The only issue I have with BirdNET is if your recording is long there is not a way to access recorded sound that is "off" the spectrogram screen in BirdNET. This is a great tool for recording and identifying bird sounds.