Ready to go live with What's Invasive!

I've written about What's Invasive! recently.

Briefly, it is an iDevice application (iPhone and Android are currently supported) that is used for mapping invasive plants. Users send geo-referenced photos to a server that provides community confirmation of identification and a map of confirmed locations. This type of map is useful for wildlands and green space management.

After a brief learning process spread over several days I've managed to get the Palos Verdes Peninsula database up and running. It ought to be live any time now pending some finalization that takes place on the server side by teh site administrator. There are at present only four invasive plants that are being tracked, but that's not a limit that we're stuck with, it's just what I felt was appropriate to start.

The most recent newcomer to on the invasives list is Terracina Spurge (Euphorbia terracina). The other three are Anise (Foeniculum vulgare), Castorbean (Ricinus communis), and Giant Reed (Arundo donax). I don't know that there's any A. donax, but I do know that the others are possibly the most common of any plant in the PV wilds. A chart accompanying the following link cites 60+ acres of a 200 acre fire area dominated solely by F. vulgare. In fact, they are considered the dominant invasive plant by the PV Peninsula Land Conservancy.:

The dominant non-native species within the grassland community of the Reserve are wild oats (Avena fatua), black mustard (Brassica nigra), short pod mustard (Hirschfeldia incana), and sweet fennel (Foeniculum vulgare). Non-native tree stands were also present along the main trails and hilltops. Non-native acacia (Acacia cyclops), eucalyptus and pine species are also dominant in the pre-fire vegetation communities of the Reserve.

Eventually the plants list ought to expand to include all the above plants.

What's Invasive!

Here's a promising app for your smart phone / iDevice from UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).

I stumbled across the What's Invasive app for Android and iPhone last night.  The idea is that you can take a geo-referenced (with your handy GPS) photo of an invasive plant and/or make a brief note.  The photo is then sent to a central server where they can be publicly evaluated (so that everyone knows that you aren't taking photos of your kids and calling them weeds) and mapped so that remediation efforts can be well-targeted.

The Whats Invasive! website has a variety of areas defined for this mapping effort, but on the iPhone the only region that can currently be reported is the Santa Monica mountains - a useful target area for test due to its proximity to Santa Monica / West LA and the scads of iPhoners that live there.  The Andriod app works with all reporting areas.

If you are not an iPhone or Android user you can still participate by regular mobile phone or old fashioned email / web access.  They don't appear to have telegram or postcard interfaces written yet.

If your favorite reporting area is not defined, then you can create your own on their web site, subject to admin approval. I've created a Palos Verdes Penninsula locale, but beyond Brassica and Foeniculum I'm not sure what invasive species to put there. I seem to recall a recent threat by a new invasive species that had thought to be a non-issue.

• Mobile Phones. Non GPS-enabled phones are also useful for capturing notes and photos (see Instructions: Email), and geolocation can be establshed later through our website (see Instructions: My Data & Photos) help page.
• Email & Web. Email us (with optional photo) with the plant name as the subject to: mobile@whatinvasive.com. Or, log in and go to the My Data page to create a new observation from your computer. Read more on our Instructions: email associations help page.

Two other apps that might appeal to readers of this blog that use the same or similar mapping strategy are:

• Biketastic! for documenting good routes and for collecting data to improve them.
• What's Bloomin for recording locations of blooming plants in your neighborhood.

However, quick checks on their web presence seemed to indicate that they are not quite fully formed yet. I suggest a check back later.

Geotagged photos

I've recently become interested in geotagging* photos.

*Geotagging means that you've associated a photo with it's latitude and longitude. Additional position information could include altitude, azimuth, and angle at which the photo was taken.


Free software I've found that will do the job is listed here:
photomapper
iTag
GPicSync