Have you ever been mountain biking and discovered that you were inches away from one of Australia’s most endangered orchard species? This was the basis for how NatureMapr came to life!
NatureMapr is a citizen science data partner of the ALA. It has evolved from a humble sighting of a Canberra Spider Orchid (Caladenia actensis) into an innovative and robust data platform underpinned by a community of keen users and expert moderators.
The tool is a repository to record sightings of species, with the data and image gallery used to inform both the public, and government bodies for planning and scientific research. Information from NatureMapr is used to support on-ground environmental outcomes such as the protection of sensitive species, informing of development decisions and guiding prescribed burns.
How does NatureMapr work with the ALA?
Any citizen scientist can record a species sighting to contribute to the database, along with uploading other critical information like GPS locations, audio recordings and images to support the data record. The platform supports both ad-hoc species occurrence records as well as structured citizen science-led surveys (bioblitzes and photographic competitions). Data submissions can be made in less than a minute using the NatureMapr App (available through mobile app for iOS or Android) or through the NatureMapr website.
NatureMapr’s AI based non-human moderator works together with its community of expert human moderators to quickly provide expert identification of submissions to users. From there, verified data is automatically passed through to the ALA as well as respective state and local government biodiversity databases as open data. The work of data partners like NatureMapr helps to bridge the gap between citizen science observations and driving on-ground research to allow easy discoverability and visibility of Australian biodiversity data.
