How to create your own species list using iNaturalist
🕑 Added 2025-02-14 21:16:40 +0000 UTCThis will probably only interest some of you but this is a very helpful tool for creating a list of plants you have observed, or that someone else observed, In a given boundary locations such as county state or country. You can then sort the information according to species and family or whatever other data is applicable.
For me this is helpful because I can create checklists for different counties in my region or list of species that I have seen all over the world, sorted by family.
Go to inaturalist.org, then fill in the fields under "explore" or "my observations" according to what taxon level and locality you wish to create a species list for.
Then, Under "Filter" select "download" in the lower right corner.
You are then taken to a page where you can select or deselect different information fields. I usually just select "scientific name" & "family".
You then download an extractable csv file, which you can open in google sheets, libre office, or excel
Then, in google docs (what I use) :
Create new column
=A1&" "&B1
then sort by column A (species)
then sort by column B (family).
This will alphabetize the species and group them according to their family.
then highlight and copy the new column that the code above created.
then "paste special" and select "values only" in column A
Then delete the rest of the columns
Then select the column with plant names and select "data" then "Data cleanup" then remove duplicates
You can then copy and paste into a word document and create a checklist
Comments
Ryan Gray
Loving all the iNat content. You originally inspired me to start using this, I had it downloaded but was only using it to ID on the spot. I'm now in the process of uploading every organism I've ever photographed, literally. Over 10k observations and I'm currently working on my 2012 folder. It's fun, learning a lot, thanks!
Andreas S
iNat has been my most important tool to learn botany
April Hughes
Was that a double Go Fuck Yourself? We're honored! Thanks for all the info, Joey, this is really useful. I haven't used iNaturalist nearly as much as I should.
Ana Rita
That is really helpful...i will trye not forget😅