Your Citizen Science Project
with Flora Incognita

With Flora Incognita you can now conduct Citizen Science projects with diverse objectives, ranging from documenting all plants in a specific area to identifying selected species to address conservation-related queries. The collected data provides insights into plant occurrences, habitat compositions, and the abundance of specific plants in an area. Operating the project is incredibly easy: Participants use the app like they are used to, just add a specific keyword to relevant observations.

There’s also the option to attach specific protocols to the identifications to gather additional data such as flowering phases, population size, or free-text information. However, based on our experience, this should only be done if the extra information is crucial for answering the underlying research question.

Project leaders receive all the data collected during the project every month via cloud storage, allowing them to analyze and archive it. The information is presented in an easily readable text format as a .JSON file and can be converted into various formats such as .xlsx or directly imported into statistical software. If necessary, the transferred file format can be changed, but this requires a specific agreement beforehand. We reserve the right to delete the provided data after 3 months.

Getting Started

If you want to conduct a Citizen Science project with Flora Incognita, send an email to support@floraincognita.com. The email should include:

• A project description with motivation, goal, and duration of the project.
• The name of the project leader with contact information.
• Information on the data to be collected – available are species name, location, time, date, images, and identification accuracy.
• Information about whether you want an additional protocol, plus what to capture if you want one
• Additional details on where interested individuals can inquire about the project, as we cannot provide customer support for the Citizen Science project.

Project Execution

Once we have all the necessary information, we’ll create your Citizen Science project in Flora Incognita and provide the project leader with a 9-digit code. Participants must enter this code into the app and accept the following consent form. Afterward, the app is prepared, and all plant findings can be assigned to the Citizen Science project after identification. How? There’s a dedicated keyword that needs to be attached to relevant plant findings by the participants. All observations with this keyword are anonymously transmitted to the project leader.

Instead of the code, we also offer a QR code that can be scanned to activate the project in the app.

Finding Participants

You are responsible for finding participants for your project, but we can assist if our resources permit. You can present your project on a dedicated subpage of our website. Interested individuals can use this page to learn about your project and receive the activation code.

If you wish, we can also promote your project through our social media channels (with several thousand followers) to help you attract participants. For both the website and social media, we need prepared texts and image material with appropriate usage rights and source references.