Shade tree volunteers prepare BioBlitz data for city mapping, caution on data use

At the Athens Shade Tree Commission’s Feb. 18 meeting, Eva reported progress on last year’s BioBlitz, saying she has been cleaning the iNaturalist project page and working with another reviewer to ensure observations are accurate before they are added to a map. "I've been going through the iNaturalist project page that we had for the BioBlitz and cleaning things up, identifying things where people just uploaded photos," she said.

Eva said she has built a web map in ArcGIS and a separate ArcPro project for preliminary analysis, noting that city staff — including an urban planning intern and an engineering/public works intern — have expressed interest in the work and that planners may produce an official right-of-way map for commission use. "Apparently, they're going to make us a right of way map, like an official one," she said.

She cautioned the commission about licensing and privacy for the iNaturalist data. "The iNaturalist data... it's for noncommercial use only. So we have to be very careful about how we share it, like with each other and with the city," Eva said, and added that currently the dataset "can't be publicly available." To expand use, she proposed contacting prior BioBlitz participants to request consent and include a release on future sign-ups so observations can be reused beyond internal commission purposes.

Commission members discussed holding another BioBlitz in early-to-mid spring to collect additional observations in under-sampled neighborhoods. The commission agreed Eva should finalize data cleanup, coordinate with Tristan on a second review, and prepare outreach seeking participant permission before transferring any records to city datasets.

The next practical step is for Eva to show the commission the map after the meeting and circulate a plan for participant consent and a spring BioBlitz sign-up.