In the 1880s, the Champlain Society documented the flora and fauna on the land that would become Acadia National Park. If the Champlain Society were around today, would they use iNaturalist? Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park: www.schoodicinstitute.org
Olivia’s Balsam fir observation on iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146220670
Dragonfly wing coloration study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2101458118
Schoodic Notes: https://schoodicnotes.blog/
[Soundscape from Bass Harbor Head Light including buoy bells, waves lapping, and birdsong]
Olivia: Sea to Trees is brought to you by Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. I’m Olivia Milloway.
Seth: Science is for everyone, and everyone is for science! Today, we’re inviting you to participate in our third, what we call four B’s: birds, barnacles, bugs, and…. Birches!
Olivia: That was Seth Benz, Schoodic Institute’s Bird Ecology Director, with Nick Fisichelli, the CEO, chiming in at the end. Back in August of 2022, Seth welcomed a group of volunteers who had gathered on Schoodic Institute’s campus. Even though it was still morning, temperatures were already in the 80s, and the twenty or so volunteers–the youngest, just five years old–were eager to start the day’s activity: the Birds, Bugs, Birches, and Barnacles BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a short but concentrated effort to document the species living in a given area. Another word to describe this catalog of life is biodiversity. Biodiversity describes variation among individual genes, species, and entire ecosystems. Acadia’s biodiversity was one of the reasons the park was founded back in 1916. Acadia straddles the transition zone between temperate deciduous forests of the south and spruce-fir boreal forests of the north, providing a myriad of habitat types that offer homes to dozens of species of mammals, hundreds of species of birds, and nearly a thousand species of plants. Encompassing a mosaic of different ecosystems within its glacially-sculpted mountains and lakes, Acadia’s streams, wetlands, and upland forests are connected to over 40 miles of rocky shoreline and 80 or so coastal islands in the cold, productive waters of the Gulf of Maine. Porcupines, loons, and otters are neighbors to peregrine falcons, spotted salamanders, and mink. Acadia provides an important opportunity for animals to move uninterrupted from the sea to the trees along Maine’s coast. Despite the protection that comes with being a National Park, Acadia’s biodiversity is changing, and it’s important for the park to understand how in order to best protect its natural and cultural resources now and into the future. People in and around Acadia have been documenting biodiversity since before it was a park, and Seth told the volunteers that BioBlitzes are important tools to continue to document and understand how the environment is changing.
Seth: Here in Acadia National Park, we've been keeping track of things for over 150 years. We're very fortunate to be one of the few national parks in the country to have such a lineage of historical information all the way up to present. So, you're part of that effort, which we think is really important. It allows us to track what’s happening with all kinds of different insects, even trees, lichens, all those sorts of things. Once we get an explanation we’ll be maybe an hour and a half in the field taking photographs, then we’ll come back here… Olivia: You’re listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast that tells the stories of the science happening in and around Acadia from the rocky shoreline to the evergreen forests to the granite mountaintops. In this first season of the show, we’re exploring the ever-growing field of citizen science and how it can help answer questions about our changing world. In this second episode, we’ll learn about iNaturalist, a web-based tool making citizen science and biodiversity data more accessible than ever. We’ve talked about iNaturalist a few times on the show already–so what is it, exactly?
Carrie: iNaturalist was created to connect people to nature through technology, and we are still doing that today. The way that iNaturalist does that is by providing a way for people to share their encounters with biodiversity, and collectively what emerges is an incredible dataset that tells you when and where different species were found all over the Earth.
Olivia: That was Carrie Seltzer, the Stakeholder Engagement Strategist at iNaturalist. If you’re using iNaturalist, you can create a record of the biodiversity you’ve encountered by sharing observations.
Carrie: An observation is a record of an organism in a place at a time. Mostly, observations are photo-based. You can also record sounds within the app and share those, but most of it is photo based. So you can either take a new photo if you're out in the field right now, see something cool, or you can pull in photos that you have already taken.
Olivia: If you can’t identify the organism–or, maybe you know it’s an evergreen tree, just not which one–iNaturalist’s powerful artificial intelligence will suggest potential matches. If even the AI is stumped, you should still upload the photo–this is where the knowledge and talents of other iNaturalist users comes in handy. Scientists and citizen scientists who are experts in their fields, identify these “unknown” observations or suggest corrections. I went into the forest around Schoodic Institute’s campus to test out the app.
Olivia (outside): So I am walking through the woods right now, and because I’m in the park I don’t have really good cell service, but that’s okay because whatever photos I take now I can upload when I’m back on wifi. Okay, so I’m seeing a conifer, which is a type of tree that has cones and needles, and I think this one is a balsam fir, but I’m not 100% sure. So, I’m going to go ahead and click the observe button in the app, take a few photos, and see if the iNat community can back me up on this ID.
Olivia: Taking photos of what I’m seeing outside is probably my favorite part of using iNaturalist because, regardless of if I have any clue of what I’m seeing, it makes me stop and think: what’s unique about what I’m seeing that could help someone identify it? Species ID is fun for me because it feels like I’m solving a puzzle; if you have just one piece of the puzzle–like for example, the tree I found that day had needles–that could only get me so far, because, well, lots of trees in Acadia have needles. But, if I can say something more specific, like the needles were about an inch long–I have a bigger piece of the puzzle. I decided to take a photo of the needles with my thumb for scale, so a potential identifier could infer their relative size. I looked for other characteristics that could be additional pieces to the species ID puzzle.
Olivia (outside): Now, I don’t know what the bark of a balsam fir is supposed to look like, but I do know that white pine, which is another common conifer species around here, has a really distinctive bark, so I’m going to take a photo of this tree’s bark. And, another thing I can think of is cones. A lot of conifers will have very distinctive cones whether that’s size or shape, but I’m not seeing any cones on this one, so I’m going to take a few steps back and I’m going to take one more photo of the whole tree because the general size and shape can be indicative of what the species is as well. Okay. Time to head back to wifi and get this uploaded.
Olivia: Once back inside, I uploaded the observation, and iNaturalist also suggested balsam fir as an ID. I waited for a community member to come along and confirm the species; once any observation gets two agreeing identifications it’s considered “research grade” and is available for scientists.
Carrie: iNaturalist now has a massive amount of biodiversity data and we've got records from every inhabited country in the world. Our role is really to make the data available, and get out of the way.
Olivia: iNaturalist makes millions of “research grade” data points available for download and use by scientists, with new observations added each day. Schoodic Institute projects, like Landscape of Change, have made use of these data.
Catherine: Landscape of Change is a collaborative project led by Mount Desert Island Historical Society, with Schoodic Institute, Acadia National Park, College of the Atlantic, Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, and a Climate to Thrive, to use historical data to document the changing environment of Mount Desert Island.
Olivia: That was Catherine Schmitt, Schoodic Institute’s Science Communication Specialist. Landscape of Change was inspired by the work of the Champlain Society, a group of Harvard Students who, in the summers of the 1880s, camped on Mount Desert Island and conducted the first comprehensive natural history survey of flora and fauna on the island.
Catherine: And they kept really detailed records, and they wrote it all down in thousands of pages of logbook entries and scientific reports. If they were out there today, they would absolutely be using iNaturalist.
Olivia: These logbooks are a part of a long legacy of natural history records in the land that would become Acadia National Park, including Wabanaki knowledge and the work of naturalists and scientists. While researching for another story on Acadia’s rich scientific history, Catherine found the Champlain Society’s records in the collections of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society. Catherine: As soon as I saw all of their lists of species and their measurements of the island and their surveys of the shoreline, I knew immediately that there were scientists out there who would be interested in this information. As part of Landscape of Change, we had a lot of work to do to make the data usable. We had to digitize, so scan thousands of pages of notebooks. We had to take thousands of pages of 19th century handwriting and transcribe it.
Olivia: They also had a comprehensive list of insects in Acadia from an early 1900s study from the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. After compiling and digitizing the historical data, Landscape of Change put out a call to citizen scientists to collect new data on birds and pollinating insects using iNaturalist and another citizen science database that’s just for bird observations called eBird. iNaturalist and eBird users detected more than two hundred species of birds in Acadia, which is more than twice what the Champlain Society saw.
Catherine: But it's in the abundance that we really see big differences. So over the last 140 years, of those species that the Champlain Society did document, 8% of them have increased, most of them did not change at all, so if they were common back then, they are still common today. And 14% of them have decreased in abundance. But the question that everybody has when they see these results is why, and what’s causing these changes.
Olivia: While it’s less clear why the changes are happening, climate change and loss of suitable habitat likely play a role. In the future, the Landscape of Change project partners plan to use data from harbormasters, lighthouse keepers, and sailors to track sea level rise and shoreline change over time.
Catherine: When we're thinking about how can we tell the effect climate change is having on places like Acadia, historical records are really important because they can help to show us real information by real people recorded in their own words of what places were like 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago.
Olivia: Close to 2000 people contributed observations to the Landscape of Change Project, generating new data to compare with the past.
Catherine: One of the benefits to projects like this is it gives the community some common ground for conversations about how this place is changing and what we're going to do about it.
Olivia: Kyle Lima of Schoodic Institute who analyzed the data for the Landscape of Change report also reflected on the value of the effort.
Kyle: Another benefit of Landscape of Change is showing all the people who have been partaking in our organized BioBlitzes, or just going out on their own and observing things, like it’s not just for nothing, right. It’s being used, and it’s all of great value. So, it’s a really cool project, and I’m glad that it can finally give back a little bit to the public to all those people that have given so many hours to iNaturalist and other citizen science projects. I think that that’s something that we have not done in the past as well, we being scientists as a whole.
Olivia: Biodiversity information is just the start of the knowledge scientists can garner from iNaturalist observations. Some observations document species interactions, like a beetle pollinating a flower, or rarely seen behaviors like lizard mating. New species have also been documented using iNaturalist, as well as inspiring new questions about well-known organisms, like dragonflies. Michael Moore, a researcher now at Washington University in St. Louis, was using iNaturalist when he noticed that male dragonflies have differing wing colorations depending on their geographic region. After conducting experimental studies and analyzing the iNaturalist data, Moore concluded that there is an evolutionary relationship between temperature, male dragonfly wing color, and mating success. As temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, male dragonflies could lose their wing colorations, making them less appealing mates to female dragonflies.
Carrie: All these pieces together told a story that would have been maybe never even conceived of without the tens of thousands of observations of these dragonflies on iNaturalist. And I love that example because it’s just so cool to see how the existence of all the iNaturalist data created a question and an idea and the ability to start answering it in a way that just wasn’t feasible before.
Olivia: In all of its data uses, iNaturalist has a dual goal of connecting users with the natural world, and each other, which is what makes it such a powerful tool for engaging the public.
Carrie: We are interested in data that's connected to a person that that person cares about. And that's what makes this whole thing work. Because, I have seen these things and I thought they were cool and I care about them, and other people think they're cool and are interested in them and they want to identify them. And I think that it scratches this itch of curiosity and this personal record keeping, you know, in the same way that birders love to keep life lists, right. This is like a life list of all life. [Laughs]
Olivia: Back at the BioBlitz in August 2022, Liz Halasz, a Schoodic Institute technician, gave volunteers a quick iNaturalist training to prep them for their activity.
Liz: So before I get started, how many people have done BioBlitzes before or are familiar with the app iNaturalist? Okay, got a few hands, that’s good! For people who are not familiar, that’s totally fine, all of these skills we teach today are, I think, pretty easy to learn…
Olivia: Groups headed down the Sundew Trail, into a meadow by Rockefeller Hall, and to a pollinator garden planted in one of the parking lots. Mara Halloran, another of Schoodic Institute’s technicians, brought a group down the Sundew Trail, which starts in an evergreen forest.
Kit’s partner: That little one, that little sapling’s a Christmas tree?
Kit: Is it really? Where?
Kit’s partner: Right there.
Kit: No way. Did you see the balsam fir?
Nick: Ah look, a little tree seedling! Alright!
Mara: Little guy, so cute!
Nick: Here’s a nice one right here, too.
Mara: Yeah, they’re everywhere! The little baby balsam firs.
Kit’s partner: Look, did you get the picture of it?
Kit’s daughter: Yeah, hold on…
Olivia: Kit and her family were taking photos of the balsam fir peeking through the moss on the forest floor. They were visiting Acadia National Park from New York.
Kit: Well, we were looking for fun, educational activities for our child and for our family, something to experience together in the wild, and this is what we came up with.
Olivia: Abe Miller-Rushing, who we met last episode, came to the event and brought his child, Harper.
Harper: My name is Harper and I am 12 years old.
Olivia: So, Harper, have you used iNaturalist before?
Harper: Yeah, I’ve used it a lot in the woods behind my house.
Olivia: What sort of stuff do you find out there?
Harper: I find a lot of lichens and moss, and I find a lot of daddy long legs.
Olivia: So, you’re kinda like an iNaturalist expert, right?
Olivia: You think you’re a pro at using the app?
Harper: Yeah, I use it a lot.
Olivia: Why do you use it so much?
Harper: I like that it helps you identify things, and I just like charting down stuff I find in the woods. I’ve looked at a tree grow multiple times, and I can see it flower and stuff like that.
Olivia: Harper was excited to find whatever the forest had to offer that day.
Olivia: What are you looking for down here?
Harper: Just like, whatever we can find. I’m kind of hoping for either a salamander or a centipede.
Abe: Yeah, or millipedes, or pill-bugs that live under here. This one does not look like it has a ton of animals under it though.
Harper: It does have some molds and stuff.
Olivia: The next spot was more fruitful.
Harper: A slug! I'm not sure what type, but it's a small little slug, it's very cute.
Olivia: What did you do to find that slug?
Harper: I lifted up a rock where I could see it was pretty wet, and under it is usually stuff like slugs or worms, they like it under there.
Olivia: So you're taking a picture of it now?
Olivia: Teachers, too, came to the BioBlitz, interested in learning about iNaturalist as a tool for their classrooms.
Colette: Hello, my name is Collette Jadis and I’m a teacher in alternative education at Searsport District High School. This program is specifically for students who really are just not able to succeed in the regular classroom. So we have different programs for special education, we have different programs for behavior. And so I’m here today with my co-teacher and we’re experiencing citizen science and this BioBlitz because we’d like to do something like this with our students.
Olivia: In recent years, Colette has spent more time outside with her students, and sees the benefits it brings to their learning. I asked how iNaturalist could supplement these lessons.
Colette: I think to give them a tool that they can explore and see what they connect with. Every student isn’t going to connect with it, we know this, but unless we give them exposure to things, they don't even have the choice, right? So for me it's about exposing them to some really cool different thing, maybe they take it further in that moment or this year, maybe it’s next year, maybe it’s just planting the seed. I mean I just see it’s a win-win-win all the way around whether they use it right away or not.
Olivia: At the end of the BioBlitz, the group gathered to share what they’d found, and Seth reflected on the day.
Seth: We had a lot of fun. We had a young chap, about five years old, he’s a budding naturalist. Everybody sort of rallied around him and his interests. His first question to me was, “What is gravity?” and so we went from there. I don’t know what he went away with, but. We have 197 observations, 99 species…
Olivia: What I’ve learned through my reporting on iNaturalist is that it’s a platform that’s meeting a bunch of needs at once, and gets families out to learn about the natural world together, pondering everything from dark eyed juncos to the fundamental force that holds us all together.
Seth: Anything besides a herring gull?
Lena: I saw a Junco, a dark-eyed junco.
Seth: And you were by the water?
Seth: Anything else down there, any common eiders maybe or black guillemots? Nothing? Just the gull? Well, I mean, not just the gull, the herring gull…
Olivia: Just a few hours after I posted my observation, an iNaturalist user named Michael Stien confirmed my balsam fir ID. Michael is one of those users who identifies lots of other user’s observations–at the time of our interview, exactly 23,747 observations. I reached out to ask him how he came to spend so much of his time this way.
Michael: I first started using iNaturalist when a plant biology professor of mine encouraged us to do a BioBlitz project in Oregon. And, I had never used iNaturalist before, and I wasn’t even that interested in plants at the time actually.
Olivia: Michael soon became interested in the ecological and cultural significance of the trees around him in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated from Lewis and Clark College in 2022. Michael liked using iNaturalist to see how trees like douglas fir and mountain hemlock were distributed across the region as well as learning how to identify them with the help of others. He started dedicating time to identifying trees on the app.
Michael: For balsam fir, specifically, the first things I look for are leaves about an inch long, that are on a really distinctly flat plane.
Olivia: In addition to size, Michael makes note of the shape of the needles, and how they’re attached to the branches. These tiny differences that set trees apart is what keeps bringing him back to identifying these same trees over and over again on iNaturalist.
Olivia: When I started using iNaturalist, I definitely relied heavily on the identification skills of others. So I figured I might as well try my hand in helping others and learning what key identifying characteristics actually separate those genera and those species, and hopefully confirming identifications so others can see those small distinct traits that I might see. I turned it into a hobby. It replaced like word puzzles for me probably, I think. I don’t know, I guess it’s just fun to do! [Laughs]
Seth: I will say to citizen science in general, especially with the biodiversity work that we do, that is the most gratifying and sort of wellbeing feeding for me. The thing that I like is even though they’re doing that stuff here, biodiversity work you can take with you to your home place. Any backyard, any park patch, anything like that. You don’t have to come to a National Park to experience that. Citizen science is providing tools where people can do this in their backyards. And if we’re all doing that and paying more attention, we learn more about our relationship with nature, and hopefully that’ll change the trajectory of the way we humans are dealing with nature.
Olivia: So far this season, we’ve kept our feet firmly planted on the ground. For this next episode, we’re heading to where land meets water: the intertidal zone.
Mikayla: Thank you for listening to Sea to Trees, a podcast from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park. Acadia National Park is on traditional lands of the Wabanaki, People of the Dawn. This show was made by Olivia Milloway, the Cathy and Jim Gero Acadia Early Career Fellow in Science Communication. Catherine Schmitt is our senior editor. Additional editorial and production support was provided by Mikayla Gullace, Maya Pelletier, and Patrick Kark. Our music was written by Eric Green, performed with Ryan Curless and Stu Mahan and recorded at North Blood Studios in Damariscotta, Maine. The cover art was created by Sarah Luchini. Laura Sebastenelli of Schoodic Notes recorded the soundscape at Bass Harbor Head Light Station you heard at the beginning of the episode. Special thanks this episode to Seth Benz, Carrie Seltzer, Catherine Schmitt, Kyle Lima, and Michael Stein for sharing their expertise with us. Also, thanks to the citizen scientists who came to the Birds, Bugs, Birches, and Barnacles BioBlitz and the Schoodic Institute technicians who made it happen. As a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, Schoodic Institute inspires science, learning, and community for a changing world. To learn more, visit schoodicinstitute.org.
