We have recently updated the website and database to allow anyone to define a park and upload a set of plant images and descriptions.
We already have expanded from our pilot park in Santa Monica to include the Channel Islands in California, Rock Creek Park in Washington DC, and with the help of one of our Danish graduate students, Denmark (“Danmark” in Danish), to show off the system to a group of Europeans.
If you want to check out the capabilities of setting up a new park, then first login to What’s Invasive! (if you don’t already have a login, it’s easy to sign up).
After that, go to “Account” in the upper right menu and select “Manage Sites”. The first thing to do is set up the park and you should use the official NPS acronym as the Park Tag (non-NPS locations will be designated with 5 or 6 letters). After that, there are a series of pages that should be easy to understand and walk you through the process of creating species and uploading images of them.
Once the park is approved, then everyone with an Android phone running What’s Invasive will be able to access the species list and collect location data. Be sure to download the newest version of the Android app to get all the latest functionality.
A new iPhone app with the same capabilities is coming soon!
Just downloaded the Android app and this looks like a great tool. I have a question though concerning the submittal of plant names and images for a new park. If myself as a user, submits a plant species and image, can then another user also submit the same plant species name and different images for a park? For a database standpoint, I can understand how that works for each specific site, but what if you trying to gather info across multiple site? It seems like a new user should choose from a “master list” of invasive plants that way PlantA in ParkX is the same PlantA in ParkY.
If the plant species is not on the “master list” then they could add it along with photos for your review and approval, similar to what you do now for new parks.
Either way, I’ll be testing this out for natural areas owned by Palm Beach County, FL, http://www.pbcgov.com/erm/natural/natural-areas/index2.htm (this is a draft website).
Hello Matt,
Thanks for trying out the system and I look forward to communicating with you about this via email.
We have been talking with the EDDMaps people who have a “master list” of plants that are considered invasive in North America and this is indeed where we are going with this. We are exploring a way to gather plant information and photos automatically from the PLANTS database from the USGS and so this might even easier to build a plant list.
We appreciate your thoughts and comments on this — thanks for taking time out to make this suggestion!
E.
Hi there
I do not have a fany phone, so I am looking at the website from a good old desktop. Unfortunately, the drop-down menus are not working properly.
I find your project fascinating and innovative, and I would love to have access to the date online!
Hello Catherine,
We are working to make sure that the site is compatible across all browsers (this is harder than it looks!). We have updated the pages now such that basic functionality is restored.
We are also working on getting regular old “normal” phone support up and running as soon as possible.
Thanks for your comments and we hope that everything is up and running soon so you can submit observations.
E.