Minnesota Sea Grant has a great suggestion for how you could spend just a few minutes every day between today and May 20, 2020, to celebrate the bright spots in each of our days.
Join the Great Lakes Bioblitz!
A what? Think of it like a blitz of biological surveying. Bioblitz is a communal citizen-science effort to record as many species within a designated location and time period as possible.
Where? You can 'blitz from your kitchen window, in your backyard, and outdoor spaces all across the Great Lakes states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York and across Ontario, Canada. Just be smart, take appropriate precautions, and keep your social distance.
How? It takes an app called iNaturalist. Visit www.inaturalist.org on your computer, or download the iNaturalist app from an app store onto your mobile device.
Then what?
- Create an account (free)
- Become a member of the [your state] Bioblitz CGLL*
- Become a member of the Great Lakes Bioblitz CGLL* umbrella project.
- Start making observations
Have friends or family outside Minnesota? Visit https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/great-lakes-bioblitz-cgll and search for [state name] Bioblitz (CGLL). *CGLL is the Center for Great Lakes Literacy.
Contact: Minnesota Sea Grant Extension Educator Marte Kitson at [email protected] or 218-726-8305.
Top image: This true-color image shows North and South America as they would appear from space 35,000 km (22,000 miles) above the Earth. The image is a combination of data from two satellites. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite collected the land surface data over 16 days, while NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) produced a snapshot of the Earth’s clouds.
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