City Nature Challenge

The City Nature Challenge is an annual, global, community science competition to document urban biodiversity. The challenge is a bioblitz that engages residents and visitors to find and document plants, animals, and other organisms living in urban areas.[1][2] The goals are to engage the public in the collection of biodiversity data, with three awards each year for the cities that makes the most observations, find the most species, and engage the most people.[1][3][4]

Participants primarily use the iNaturalist app and website to document their observations, though some areas use other platforms, such as Natusfera in Spain.[5] The observation period is followed by several days of identification and the final announcement of winners.[1][6] Participants need not know how to identify the species; help is provided through iNaturalist's automated species identification feature as well as the community of users on iNaturalist, including professional scientists and expert naturalists.[7]

History

The City Nature Challenge was founded by Alison Young and Rebecca Johnson of the California Academy of Sciences and Lila Higgins of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.[8] The first challenge was in the spring of 2016 between Los Angeles and San Francisco.[9][10] Participants documented over 20,000 observations with the iNaturalist platform.[11] In 2017, the challenge expanded to 16 cities across the United States and participants collected over 125,000 observations of wildlife in 5 days.[12] In 2018, the challenge expanded to 68 cities across the world.[3][12] In four days, over 441,000 observations of more than 18,000 species were observed, and over 17,000 people participated.[13][1][14] The 2019 challenge more than doubled in scale, with almost a million observations of over 31,000 species observed by around 35,000 people.[15][16]

Taking the competition beyond its US roots, the 2019 event was a much more international affair, with the winning city for observations and species coming from Africa (Cape Town), and three South American (La Paz, Tena and Quito) and two Asian areas (Hong Kong and Klang Valley) ranking in the top ten for number of observations.[17]

In 2020, the organizers removed the competition aspect due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stating, "To ensure the safety and health of all participants, this year’s CNC is no longer a competition. Instead, we want to embrace the collaborative aspect of sharing observations online with a digital community, and celebrate the healing power of nature as people document their local biodiversity to the best of their ability."[18] Fewer observations were documented in 2020 than the prior year, though more species were found and more cities and people participated.[19]

Results
YearStart dateEnd dateCitiesObservationsSpeciesParticipantsMost observationsMost speciesMost participantsRef.
201614 April21 April219,7423,1521,018 Los Angeles (10,353) Los Angeles (1,601) Los Angeles (574)[1]
201714 April18 April16> 125,0008,600> 4,000 Dallas/Fort Worth (23,957) Houston (2,419) Los Angeles (1,034)[1]
201827 April30 April68442,518> 18,00017,329 San Francisco (41,737) San Francisco (3,211) San Francisco (1,532)[20][14]
201926 April29 April159963,773> 31,00035,126 Cape Town (53,763) Cape Town (4,588) San Francisco (1,947)[21][16]
202024 April27 April244815,258> 32,50041,165N/A in 2020N/A in 2020N/A in 2020[19][22]
202130 April3 MayN/AN/AN/AN/AN/AN/AN/A[2]

References
  1. "About the City Nature Challenge". City Nature Challenge. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  2. "City Nature Challenge". City Nature Challenge. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
  3. Bray, Marianne (12 December 2017). "Conservation in Hong Kong: citizen scientists work to protect nature". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  4. Roth, Katherine (15 January 2019). "Apps tap growing global pursuit of insect tracking". Detroit News. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  5. Guzmán, Pau (11 May 2018). "City Nature Challenge 2018". Natusfera - el Blog (in Spanish). Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  6. Crall, Alycia (19 April 2018). "Competition Meets Collaboration: The City Nature Challenge". Citizen Science Salon. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  7. Ledbetter, Rhesa (25 April 2017). "Nature Is Calling: Satisfy Your Curiosity And Contribute To Scientific Research Using iNaturalist". www.upr.org. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  8. "City Nature Challenge a fun way to become a naturalist". Marin Independent Journal. 24 March 2017. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  9. Netburn, Deborah (14 April 2016). "L.A. takes on San Francisco in the first City Nature Challenge". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  10. Lewis, Danny (18 April 2016). "Scientists Catalog Creatures in Every Corner of Los Angeles". Smithsonian. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  11. "City Nature Challenge 2016 iNaturalist Project". 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  12. "City Nature Challenge 2017 iNaturalist Project". 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  13. Higgins, Lila (4 May 2018). "City Nature Challenge 2018: A Win For Urban Nature Around the World". Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County.
  14. "City Nature Challenge 2018 Results!!". 5 May 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  15. "2019 City List". City Nature Challenge. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  16. Young, Alison; Higgins, Lila (6 May 2019). "Results are in!". City Nature Challenge. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  17. "Leaderboard 2019 – City Nature Challenge". Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  18. "COVID19 – City Nature Challenge". Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  19. "City Nature Challenge RESULTS". 4 May 2020. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  20. "2018 Leaderboard". City Nature Challenge. Archived from the original on 17 January 2019. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  21. "Leaderboard 2019". City Nature Challenge. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  22. "2020 City List". City Nature Challenge. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
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