---
id: data-sources/inaturalist
about:
  label: iNaturalist
  description: >-
    Community platform where people photograph plants, animals and fungi and
    others identify them; the observations are published as open biodiversity
    data for research and conservation.
  tags:
    - biodiversity
    - species
    - observations
    - community science
    - open data
datasource:
  coverage: global
  resolution: individual georeferenced observations with photos or sound
  access: 'open data; website, app, GBIF Darwin Core archive and an AWS S3 extract'
  homepage: 'https://www.inaturalist.org/'
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: A Community for Naturalists · iNaturalist
      url: 'https://www.inaturalist.org/'
    - title: iNaturalist Species Observations
      url: >-
        https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=996576ae63d4499c924aabea1c3d3768
    - title: Peering Into The Invisible Present
      url: 'https://longnow.org/ideas/peering-into-the-invisible-present/'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
import:
  source: openai-linkedin-scrape 2026-10-17
  id: DT057
  kind: data_platform
  family: observations_data_and_reconstruction
  priority: supporting
  verified: false
  posts:
    - P133
    - P148
  posters:
    - Galen Oettel
    - The Long Now Foundation
domains:
  - ecology
  - people
---
iNaturalist is a nonprofit, community-run platform and app. People upload photographs or recordings of organisms with a place and time, and the community identifies them. Its own site reports more than 300 million observations, more than 550,000 species documented and more than 7,000 papers citing its data. An observation becomes "research grade" once more than one person has agreed on the species.

For a twin of a place the data gives a dense but uneven record of what has been seen where. A 2022 Long Now essay describes studies built on it, including a 17-year analysis of dragonfly colouration drawn from iNaturalist and GBIF records, and notes the known biases: sightings cluster near cities and roads, and growth in users can look like growth in populations.

The observations are open data. Beyond the website and app they are distributed as a GBIF Darwin Core archive and an AWS S3 open-data extract, which is what Esri's Living Atlas layer is derived from. Research-grade records require a date, coordinates, at least one photo or sound, and a wild rather than captive organism.

Operational; the platform has run since at least 2012 and is still growing.