iNaturalist, A Cultivator of Community and Collector of Crucial Wildlife Data, Goes Solo

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have you ever seen a weird bug or plant and thought, “Oh my God. What is THAT?” Then iNaturalist, a Bay Area invention, is the social platform for you. Begun as a graduate school project at UC Berkeley, it now receives hundreds of thousands of monthly submissions from nature enthusiasts across the globe. Users post photos of what they have seen and where they found it, and fellow citizen scientists, and often actual, scientists help identify the flora, fauna and habitat. Some iNaturalist aficionados have even identified new species. Now the site is going independent with the help of a $10 million grant. We’ll survey the past and future of this remarkable Bay Area contribution to our collective understanding of the world. Guests: Ken-ichi Ueda, co-director, iNaturalist Scott Loarie, co-director, iNaturalist Jennifer Rycenga, professor emeritus in the Humanities Department, San Jose State University; former president of the Sequoia Audubon Society in San Mateo. Prakrit Jain, student of evolutionary biology, University of California, Berkeley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for Key QBD Podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport. At SFO, you can shop,
0:06.7	dine, and unwind before your flight. Go ahead, treat yourself. Learn more about SFO restaurants and
0:12.7	shops at flysfo.com. Support for forum comes from Broadway SF, presenting Parade, the musical revival based on a true story.
0:23.4	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of Leo and Lucille Frank,
0:29.6	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is accused of an
0:35.3	unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and devotion.
0:43.4	The riveting and gloriously hopeful parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th.
0:51.7	Tickets on sale now at Broadwaysf.com.
0:56.6	From KQED.
0:58.0	From KQED.
1:14.9	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal, and I am a plant nerd.
1:19.8	I pay attention to the trees and shrubs and grasses of my neighborhood and our incredible surrounding park system.
1:21.6	Over the years, I've learned to ID the common things, but the world is complex, and so,
1:26.3	with regularity, I find myself opening up my phone,
1:29.5	pulling up I-naturalist, a one-of-a-kind app that helps you identify the living things around you
1:34.5	through a combination of community knowledge and machine learning. They've been housed at the California
1:39.9	Academy of Sciences, but with the aid of a $10 million grant, they're striking out on their own.
1:46.0	We'll survey the past and future of this remarkable Bay Area contribution to our collective
1:50.8	understanding of the world. It's coming up next after this news.
1:58.2	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. If you've ever seen a weird bug or flower or tree and thought to yourself, oh my God, what is that? I have to know. Then this is the show for you. We're going to be talking about i-naturalist, a community for all of us to
2:19.2	figure out all this life that surrounds us in the city, in the parks, in the backcountry. While
2:25.7	i-naturalist began as a master's project at Berkeley, it's grown into a one-of-a-kind platform that's
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KQED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KQED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.