Jonathan Trouern-Trend, an intelligence sergeant with the Connecticut National Guard, was at the latrine of the U.S. military base near Al Bakr, Iraq, when he made a discovery: a Lemon-Yellow Tree Frog, one of Iraq's eight species of amphibians, was sharing the bathroom with him. According to Trouern-Trend, the frog had likely been sucked up from a nearby pond by a cleaning truck, which then deposited the frog inside the bathroom when workers hosed down the facilities.
Trouern-Trend, concerned that the midday heat would render the oven-like latrine uninhabitable for amphibians (not to mention human beings), sprang into action. He captured the frog, carried it to a nearby pond, and released it after snapping a picture.
Back at his computer, he uploaded the photo to iNaturalist, a new social network for identifying flora and fauna. He then tagged the image with the latrine's location and added it to the Global Amphibian Blitz project (here's his observation).
I first learned about iNaturalist a month ago, when a friend of mine (who also helps run the website) introduced me to it. The network can be used for simple species identification (much as I've previously described), or it can facilitate dedicated projects like the Global Amphibian Blitz, which is an effort to take a census of all the world's amphibians. A joint project of Amphibiaweb, The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, The Amphibian Specialist Group and The Amphibian Ark, the project uses Web 2.0 technology to enable people from all over the world to track amphibians using cameras or smart phones.
And the project needs your help - and you don't have to be an expert or a National Guardsman to pitch in.
Join the Global Amphibian Blitz at http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/global-amphibian-blitz today to help census the world's amphibians for science and conservation
Video all about blitz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOt-G3xG6Yg&feature=player_embedded
Trouern-Trend, concerned that the midday heat would render the oven-like latrine uninhabitable for amphibians (not to mention human beings), sprang into action. He captured the frog, carried it to a nearby pond, and released it after snapping a picture.
Back at his computer, he uploaded the photo to iNaturalist, a new social network for identifying flora and fauna. He then tagged the image with the latrine's location and added it to the Global Amphibian Blitz project (here's his observation).
I first learned about iNaturalist a month ago, when a friend of mine (who also helps run the website) introduced me to it. The network can be used for simple species identification (much as I've previously described), or it can facilitate dedicated projects like the Global Amphibian Blitz, which is an effort to take a census of all the world's amphibians. A joint project of Amphibiaweb, The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, The Amphibian Specialist Group and The Amphibian Ark, the project uses Web 2.0 technology to enable people from all over the world to track amphibians using cameras or smart phones.
And the project needs your help - and you don't have to be an expert or a National Guardsman to pitch in.
Join the Global Amphibian Blitz at http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/global-amphibian-blitz today to help census the world's amphibians for science and conservation
Video all about blitz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOt-G3xG6Yg&feature=player_embedded
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