The Flora Incognita app enables the implementation of citizen science projects. These projects can have a variety of purposes, from documenting all plants in a particular area to identifying selected species to answer questions relating to nature conservation. Depending on the issue, there are public and non-public projects. Project managers receive all data collected in their project on a monthly basis in a cloud for further evaluation.
You can find an overview of all public projects in the Flora Incognita app.
These projects are suitable for all users; no special instructions or training are required. They are listed in the project overview, where interested users can find out more about them and activate them with a simple click.
These projects are only relevant to specific target groups and are not publicly accessible. Project managers provide activation codes to specific individuals, which can be used to activate the project in the app.
Public projects are visible in the project overview and can be activated using the plus sign next to the name. Activation codes for non-public projects can be entered using the project icon in the bottom right corner.
Many citizen science projects are looking for very specific plant species. Find out exactly which plants you need to document for each project! Then identify the plant using Flora Incognita.
A plant observation is not automatically available for a citizen science project. To transfer the observation to the project manager, you must assign the exact tag for each project to the observation. When the project was activated, the necessary tag was already integrated into the app. There are two ways to attach it to the observation:
The observation is available for the project when the tag is visible in your observation list.
Some projects require additional information about the observation that cannot be captured with just a single identification—for example, what the surrounding area looks like or how many specimens are present at the site. To enter this information, an additional questionnaire appears under the tag field after you have assigned the appropriate tag to your find.
In your profile, you can set up a flora routine in the expert section to automatically assign project tags to plant observations. Here, you can specify that certain species, or all finds within a specific time period or geographical area, receive the desired tag after identification.
We recommend that you carefully consider all aspects of planning and implementing a citizen science project in advance before contacting us about implementing the project. For further direction, check out the Guide to citizen science: developing, implementing and evaluating citizen science to study biodiversity and the environment in the UK, published by the Natural History Museum and NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology for UK-EOF.
Image adapted from: Tweddle, J. C., Robinson, L. D., Pocock, M. J., & Roy, H. E (2012). Guide to citizen science: developing, implementing and evaluating citizen science to study biodiversity and the environment in the UK. Natural History Museum and NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology for UK-EOF.
Available online at: www.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/citizenscienceguide.pdf.
If you want to conduct a citizen science project that involves monitoring plants, you can use the Flora Incognita app and benefit from a very large, very active community. However, the app is only a tool; you are responsible for the implementation, evaluation, and communication of the project.
The process is as follows:
The Flora Incognita Project is a joint project of the Technische Universität Ilmenau and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena. It is funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation and the National Monitoring Centre for Biodiversity with funding from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
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