Documenting Nature Along the Greenway

Grapevine Beetle, submitted
and identified via iNaturalist

Do you ever wonder at the variety and diversity of species found along the Greenway (or other natural spaces around the city)? Did you know that iNaturalist has "Places" that show all the observations submitted within a defined geographic area? You can view by Johnson County, Iowa City, or various Places of Interest within the city. 

There are three such places for the Greenway:  Sycamore Trail, which includes the land around the trail from Grant Wood Elementary to the Lehman Avenue extension; Sycamore Wetlands, which is limited to the city-owned wetland cells; and Sycamore Greenway, which includes both the trail and the city-owned wetlands. You can also visit the Places created for Ralston Creek, Scott Park, Ryerson's Woods, and many other natural spaces in and around town. 

These Points of Interest automatically collect any observations within their boundaries, so if you use iNaturalist to identify a plant or insect along the Greenway, your observation is added to the data! Some places, like Ashton Prairie, even have annual BioBlitz events where volunteers document huge numbers of observations together on a single day.

Although it's not technically a "Point of Interest" I recently visited McCollister Boulevard and noted a wide variety of plants and insects on the short stretch between Sycamore and South Gilbert; those observations were duly uploaded to iNaturalist and added to the observations of others in the same area. You can zoom around and browse each point: blue for birds, mammals, herps, and other non-insects, red for insects and arachnids, pink for fungi, and green for plants. 

It's an easy way to both learn about the things you see along the Greenway and elsewhere, and also contribute data documenting the variety of life that any area supports.