Date/Time
Friday, April 24, 2020 - Monday, April 27, 2020All Day
Description
From April 24th-27th, cities around the world will be competing to see who can make the most observations of nature, find the most species, and engage the most people in the 2020 City Nature Challenge.
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. In 2017 the City Nature Challenge went national, and in 2018, the CNC became an international event!
It can be hard for northern cities to beat the crazy amount of biodiversity you find further South, but last year Halifax brought in an impressive 900+ species, 7600+ observations, and 237 people working on the challenge, doing quite a bit better than many other North American cities (and coming out on top in Canada!) This year, in light of the evolving Covid-19 situation in Nova Scotia, YNC families are being encouraged to contribute to the count by holding our own mini “bioblitz” in their backyards and around their neighbourhoods. So from April 24-27th, get outside and take some pictures of the life around you! YNC staff and volunteers will help identify the organisms you’ve found during the ID-phase of the challenge, from April 28th-May 3rd.
PS: YNC will be sharing their findings through the iNaturalist app, so that researchers and citizen scientists of the future can access our work and use the data to inform future conservation and environmental management. If your family would like to contribute to the challenge on your own, or if you are participating through YNC but want to upload the observations yourself, you can add yourself to the iNaturalist project at www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-halifax-regional-municipality
Everyone is welcome, everyone can participate. All you need to do is:
1) Download the https://inaturalist.ca/ application (it’s so easy to use!)
2) Observe Nature (take photos of the critters and plants you see)
3) Upload, and share!