Insect Photo-blitz on the Boston Harbor Islands

[Bruno de Medeiros]

Hi everyone, 

This is an announcement from Jessica Rykken, who is organizing the event. I thought people in the club might be interested in participating.

Best,

Bruno

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You’re invited to participate in a “photo-bioblitz” on Thompson Island on Saturday, May 11 (rain date is Sunday, May 12).  The event is open to anyone with a digital image-capturing device (e.g., dSLR, point-and-shoot, smartphone) and we welcome photographers of all skill levels.  Our goal is to pilot a program to document flora and fauna in national parks by photo voucher, allowing park visitors and other citizen scientists to contribute to biodiversity inventory efforts with their cameras.  Our event will focus on spring insects and arthropods—a good challenge!

 

The PhotoBlitz will also pilot a process for uploading images and associated data to the web (iNaturalist, EOL), getting photographed specimens identified, and returning taxonomic information to the park.  We will ask participants to download images onto a laptop during the event, and also to upload some images to iNaturalist either during or after the event. 

 

*NOTE*: All participants will be signed up as NPS volunteers for the day and will need to fill out and sign a form at the event.  Also, photographers will be required to accept the terms of a Creative Commons license (Attribution, Non-Commercial-Share Alike) for contributed images.

 

 

Tentative Schedule for Saturday, May 11: 

9am—Leave EDIC dock in Boston on ferry (~30 minutes to island)

http://bostonharborislands.org/mainland-piers-edic-pier (accessible by Silver Line)

 

3pm—Depart Thompson Island, arrive back at EDIC by 3:30pm.

 

If you are interested in participating (and/or have any questions) please e-mail Jessica Rykken (jry...@oeb.harvard.oeb) or call (617-496-1221).  We are limiting the number of participants to about 12 people, so RSVP as soon as possible.