Maryland Biodiversity Project - 2020 Highlights

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Bill Hubick

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Dec 31, 2020, 10:50:49 AM12/31/20
to William Hubick, Jim Brighton
Happy New Year, Everyone! Please read and share our 2020 Maryland Biodiversity Project (MBP) highlights and consider a year-end tax-deductible donation if in a position to do so. This was such a tough year, but we accomplished a great deal together. We are excited to work with this awesome community and achieve even more in 2021. Thank you!

Don't miss the "By the numbers" sections. Incredible!

Pretty PDF version:
Google Docs if you prefer:
Highlights

* The COVID-19 response delayed this year’s exciting outreach efforts and data collection plans into 2021. We stayed safe and concentrated on data processing.

* By far the most significant MBP accomplishment of 2020 was the robust MBP integration with iNaturalist. We are processing more photos and records per month than ever before with more precise locations, faster addition to MBP than ever (often the same day), and with far less work for our contributors and editors. See our integration results so far, which include over 100,000 expert-verified observations from more than 4,000 iNaturalist users in 2020. This is a game-changer that addresses some of our greatest manual data processing challenges.

* We missed our dear friend and MBP champion Nancy Magnusson tremendously. Her memory and generous legacy contribution to MBP are wind in our sails.

* MBP was a keynote sponsor of the Maryland Bird Conservation Symposium.

* We supported MD/DC Audubon’s IBA Birdathon / backyard birdathon, which set a new record for fundraising for their important local conservation efforts.

* We collaborated with our friends at Chester River Field Research Station and partners to support grassland restoration efforts, specifically the building and installation of nest boxes for Barn Owls and American Kestrels in prime habitat.
* We optimized the MBP and Maryland Plant Atlas quad maps to load quickly even for our maps with a ton of data!
* We focused on long-term continuity of operations. We expanded the MBP board and created a Board of Directors Operating Manual that documents all our key processes and adds redundancy.
* We kicked off efforts to catalog biodiversity at Broad Creek Scout Camp in Harford County, which is the largest private tract of land in Harford County. It includes serpentine areas, old growth hemlock forest, and a large shallow lake that holds many bird species.

* We started ambitious planning for targeted data collection efforts in 2021.

* We added 119 species of wasps via collaboration with Sam Droege (USGS) and Matthias Buck (Royal Alberta Museum) (processed by Zoë Tice).

* We added 109 species of nematode (Phylum Nematoda) to the MBP checklist! MBP thanks Mihail Kantor and Zafar Handoo of USDA-ARS, Mycology and Nematology Genetic Diversity and Biology Laboratory, Beltsville, MD for their review/editing of the list and for sharing the information from the USDA Nematode Collection database to the checklist.

* We collaborated with experts researching the status of the King’s Hairstreak butterfly in Maryland.

* Other data mining progress included new species, records, and status info from papers covering ants (Frye et al., 2014), jewel beetles (Buprestidae), fleas and host species, land planarians, and much more. We improved all of our data-mining processes and documentation. We welcomed summer intern Caroline Troy to the team.

* MBP board member Jane Hill focused on adding status, description, and relationship information to MBP plant pages.

* The MBP Facebook page reached over 12,000 page followers.

* Instagram outreach flew past 1,000 followers. Twitter broke 600 followers.

* We added another physical archival process and cloud storage process to our long list of redundant, secure back-up processes.

* We shared hundreds of Maryland natural history posts on social media here on Facebook, Twitter, (https://twitter.com/MDBiodiversity) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mdbiodiversity/).

By the numbers - 2020

* New species/taxa added in 2020: 391
* New county records added in 2020: 4,032
* New USGS quad records added in 2020: 22,721
* New month records added in 2020: 2,451
* New records documented during 2020: 63,694
* Records processed during 2020: 135,636
* Photos added in 2020: 160,636

By the numbers - All Time

* Species/taxa featured: 19,365
* Species with photos: 11,658
* Total Records: 591,730
* Total Photos: 317,672
* Contributors: 9,366
* Photos in the MBP Flickr queue: 32

Thank you!

As always, thank you to our amazing community of contributors and editors!

Donations

Donations are greatly appreciated and help keep up project growth and momentum. Click "Donate" in the top-right corner of nearly any MBP page (https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/).

Cover Photo Credit
Barn Owl photo courtesy of iNaturalist user apizzala, some rights reserved (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Link to the pretty PDF version with photos:

Or Google Docs if you prefer:

Bill

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