Bioblitzing and the Pursuit of Nature in San Francisco

This year, the week of events hosted by the USF Office of Sustainability in celebration of Earth Day is themed around the concept of “Nature in Our City.” I’m particularly motivated by this theme as I realize the importance of recognizing nature in urban spaces and how humans themselves are a critical component of the ecological world. I touch on this in a previous blog post on how misinformed attitudes of nature have ripple effects on how the environment is managed or treated. The theme of Nature in Our City was a deliberate choice to celebrate the nature around us, nature that exists in urban spaces, and the many lifeforms that call San Francisco home.

San Francisco is uniquely positioned in the California Floristic Province, one of few global biodiversity hotspots. The California Floristic Province spans from Northern California to Baja California and stretches from the coast to the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. A huge variety of species within the California Floristic Province are endemic, meaning these species aren’t found anywhere else. This is one of the only biodiversity hotspots in the Western hemisphere and the developed world, which is so special (California Academy of Sciences, 2014)! Many of the people who call California home don’t realize how unique the ecology around them is and why it deserves to be celebrated.

San Francisco is a major metropolitan center located in an area rich with biological diversity. Despite being 95% developed, San Francisco is home to an array of birds, amphibians, insects, mammals, and over 500 native plants. Therefore, San Franciscans don’t need to travel great distances to embrace and enjoy the nature around them. In fact, urban biodiversity needs our protection efforts and appreciation as much as more “wild” open spaces. The resiliency of wildlife despite intense development and disturbance must be accounted for in order to accommodate the needs of nature better in our cities.

An important way that cities across the world celebrate and document their environment is through “bioblitzing.” Bioblitzing initiatives mobilize community scientists to record the wildlife around them so they can be identified. These identifications serve data collection purposes that help communities to identify challenges related to wildlife biodiversity and form solutions that address these problems effectively. Community science represents the collaboration between scientists and nonscientists to make observations about the world around us and the state of biodiversity in ever-changing environments. Bioblitzing harnesses the power of community science, with the help of digital platforms, like iNaturalist, to constantly collect data and catalog species.

The power of community science should not be underestimated. In 2022, two high school students from the Bay Area discovered two species of new-to-science scorpions. The students are amateur scientists who were able to identify the species solely by scrolling through the iNaturalist observations from their community science peers. The new species Paruroctonus soda and Paruroctonus conclusus are playa scorpions found in dried lake beds in Southern California deserts and these identifications will help researchers to better understand California’s biodiversity. The two students went on to coauthor a published paper where they detailed the research they conducted following their observations. One of their findings was that P. conclusus can only be found on a narrow strip of unprotected land less than two kilometers long and only a few meters wide. Their entire species could be wiped out with the construction of a single development (Laird 2022). This example serves to prove the importance of community science in efforts to protect critical biodiversity.

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) introduced the concept of bioblitzing to me. The CNC started in 2016 as a challenge between San Francisco’s California Academy of Science and Los Angeles’s Natural History Museum to engage residents of the respective cities in documenting nature to better understand urban biodiversity (citynaturechallenge.org). During the first CNC, 20,000 observations were made by more than 1,000 peopleand the event gained traction with other cities around the country and world. The CNC has evolved into a global competition that encourages people to make observations of and engage with the nature around them. The data collected from the bioblitzes and the CNC is incredibly important to making informed decisions on how to protect nature in urban environments.

The City Nature Challenge determines the metrics of the competition through three categories: observations made, species observed, and participants. During the City Nature Challenge that took place in 2023, 1,870,763 observations of over 57,227 species were made by 66,394 participants across the globe. In San Francisco alone, 31,911 observations were made of 2,852 species by 2,488 participants. I believe that the CNC reflects the deep international desire to engage with local nature and to document wildlife in efforts to appreciate it.

In 2024, the City Nature Challenge will be from April 26th through April 29th. A total of 691 cities across 51 countries will be participating. The San Francisco Bay Area community is always especially involved in the CNC and mobilizing Bay Area residents in efforts to document nature and appreciate the wild! Even the San Francisco Environment Department takes on the role of guiding and encouraging people to find nature around them, participate in habitat restoration projects, and provide safe environments for their local species communities.

The California Academy of Science is spearheading CNC events and centralizing all of the bioblitz events happening in the Bay this April. If you want to get involved, there are so many opportunities to do so! Check out this landing page from the Cal Academy that offers pre-CNC events and 32 events during the CNC weekend throughout the Bay. Dozens of Bay Area partners are working together to celebrate biodiversity in the Bay in order to protect it. This is a great opportunity to join in on the efforts and meet the community members around you who have the same goals as you. Participating is easy! Just use the iNaturalist app and take photos of wild plants and animals anywhere in the nine Bay Area counties – your entries will automatically be added to the San Francisco Bay Area City Nature Challenge Project.

Sources

Academy community science coordinator Olivia VanDamme observes wildflowers during last year’s City Nature Challenge. Gayle Laird © California Academy of Sciences

California Academy of Sciences. “Bay Area High School Students Describe Two New Scorpion Species with Academy.” California Academy of Sciences, www.calacademy.org/press/releases/bay-area-high-school-students-describe-two-new-scorpion-species-with-academy.

“City Nature Challenge.” City Nature Challenge, www.citynaturechallenge.org/.

“City Nature Challenge.” California Academy of Sciences, www.calacademy.org/community-science/city-nature-challenge.

Harper Forbes, Prakrit Jain, and Academy Curator of Arachnology Lauren Esposito, PhD, search for scorpions. (Gayle Laird 2022 © California Academy of Sciences)

“New scorpion species with California Academy of Sciences.” YouTube, uploaded by California Academy of Sciences, 1 Mar. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9W0Uqi4Y58&t=79s.

Take pictures or sound recordings of any animal, plant, or fungi and upload them to the free mobile app iNaturalist during the Challenge weekend. Gayle Laird © California Academy of Sciences