Administering iNaturalist
Setting up iNaturalist
You may want to create a project that focuses on your group's area and/or be notified of new observations. If so, you'll first need to set up a Place on iNaturalist.
Setting up a Place on iNaturalist
Make sure you search for a Place and reuse existing Places where possible, before creating a new one. Some suburbs are already loaded as Places.
Rather than drawing the outline of your place, you may be able to download it as a KML file from the council maps website for example suburbs, parks or reserves, or ecological sites:
You'll need to filter the map to just download the KML file for your area. This is easiest by selecting the Filter icon (funnel) then selecting "Filter as map moves" and zooming in. You should see the text at the top change to "Filtering 1 of xxx records".
To download it, click the Download icon (down arrow in a cloud) then select "Toggle Filters" and the Records: text will change to "(Filtered) 1". Then select Download under KML.
Creating an iNaturalist project
It may be worth setting up an iNaturalist project to track your efforts. We suggest creating a Collection project so that observations are automatically added to the project, including any observations reported when the project is set up. Please use the WCC naming where appropriate. Only call it a Park or Reserve if the place you are creating matches the WCC boundaries. Your Observation Requirements should include Old Man's Beard (Clematis vitalba) for the Taxa and a Place that matches your area.
Setting up iNaturalist notifications
You can also set up notifications of new observations that are added for your Taxa and Place.
Publishing your work
Publishing your work on a map
This section assumes you are updating iNaturalist observations as suggested here.
From the iNaturalist project page, you can Export Observations. After selecting the observation fields to be included in the export, you can then import the CSV file into Google Maps to show your progress. For example, this map shows the Aro Valley observations styled by Is the pest controlled?.
Creating an animation
You can also set up animations to show your blitzing efforts! For example, this animation shows Old Man's Beard observations by month in Wellington City.