Department of Geography, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2020 Aug 1;192(8):554. doi: 10.1007/s10661-020-08522-9.
Vegetation mapping requires extensive field data for training and validation. Volunteered geographic information in the form of geotagged photos of identified plants has the potential to serve as a supplemental data source for vegetation mapping projects. In this study, we compare the locations of specific taxa from the iNaturalist platform to locations identified on both a fine-scale vegetation map and high-resolution ortho-imagery in open-canopy shrubland in San Clemente Island, CA. Due to positional uncertainty associated with the iNaturalist observations, as well as the presence-only nature of the data, it was not possible to perform a traditional accuracy assessment. We instead measured the distance between the location recorded by an iNaturalist observer for a given taxon and the closest mapped individual of that taxon. This distance was within 10 m for a majority of the observations (64%). When comparing the iNaturalist location to the closest individual detected through image interpretation, 87% of the observations were within 10 m. The discrepancy in agreement between the vegetation map and imagery is likely due to mapping errors. While iNaturalist data come with important limitations, the platform is an excellent resource for supporting vegetation mapping and other ecological applications.
植被制图需要大量的实地数据进行训练和验证。以地理标记的已识别植物照片形式提供的志愿地理信息有可能成为植被制图项目的补充数据源。在这项研究中，我们将 iNaturalist 平台上特定分类群的位置与加利福尼亚州圣克莱门特岛开阔树冠灌木植被的精细尺度植被图和高分辨率正射影像上确定的位置进行了比较。由于 iNaturalist 观测值存在位置不确定性，以及数据的仅存在性，因此无法进行传统的准确性评估。我们转而测量了 iNaturalist 观察者为给定分类群记录的位置与该分类群最近的 mapped 个体之间的距离。对于大多数观测值（64%），这个距离在 10 米以内。当将 iNaturalist 的位置与通过图像解释检测到的最近个体进行比较时，87%的观测值在 10 米以内。植被图和图像之间的一致性差异可能是由于制图错误造成的。虽然 iNaturalist 数据存在重要的限制，但该平台是支持植被制图和其他生态应用的绝佳资源。
