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iNat Data in Your Classroom

Anne Lewis, MA Ed

Special Projects Director

SD Discovery Center

2019 National Geographic Fellow

annelewis@sd-discovery.org

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Using the Species/Location Search

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Learning Goal: Find specific species in a place.

iNat Skill:

Use the species and location search features above the map

Challenge: Search for Boreal Chorus Frog in South Dakota

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Environments

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Learning Goal: Find organisms that live in an environment. An environment is an imprecise catchall term for any place or setting you want to explore.

iNat Skill:

Plus-in till the markers become multi-colored pins. Minus-out. (You can also scroll)
Turn on and off the bounding box

Turn on by scrolling in and then click redo search in map
Turn off by clicking x in gray menu bar

Use the map legend
Explore pins

Observer, date, range maps

Challenge: Plus in to a self-defined environment. Set the bounding box. Find a plant and an animal that lives there. Learn when the observation was made, who made it, where it was made and its distribution on iNaturalist.

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Biomes

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Learning Goal: Explore the flora and fauna of different biomes.

iNat skill

Turn on map layers
Look at observations using the grid view

Challenge:

Turn on the satellite map layer. Note: if you are not logged in you will have to reset the layer to satellite layer every time you change URLS.
Set a bounding box for the Sahara Desert. Use the grid view to view observations.

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Food Webs/Trophic Levels

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Learning Goal: Study food webs/trophic levels.

iNat skill:

Use standard places
Use species view

Challenge: Find food webs in a nearby national park. Enter the name of the National Park in the location. (List) This should bring you to bounding box view. Click on the Places of Interest to find the park under Standard Places. Use the species view to find possible food webs.

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Migrations/Emergence

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Learning Goal: Track organism location through a year.

iNaturalist skill:

Use filters for organisms and place

Challenge: Select an organism that is known to migrate or emerge seasonally such as snow goose or common dandelion and filter the observations for each month to see its distribution.