Students enrolled in Grant MacEwan University’s Social Work 303 course are invited to learn more about SAPAA and project 3b – iNaturalist. This application is a data collection tool that can help to improve ‘Nature Literacy’.
This post is specifically written for the students enrolled Dr. Valerie Ouedraogo, course, Social Work 303. However, all students working with SAPAA are welcome to review to learn the basics of the organization.
Who Am I, My Role
Your host for this project is myself, Frank Potter. I am the President of SAPAA as well as its webmaster. The SAPAA board has broad experience across various disciplines, their biographies are available here: Contact Us.
Stewards of Alberta’s Protected Areas Association (SAPAA) strives to provide a best in class learning opportunity for the students. Because SAPAA invests considerable time and effort in the students, it runs its projects using these philosophies:
- One Neck to Choke. Single project manager selected by the team.
- Let’s Talk. Students juggle many priorities. We can discuss scope or pivot.
- Think Resume, Not Grade. Grades are important, employment more so.
- Consulting Engagement. You are treated as if your team is a consulting company hired to complete the engagement on time, budget, and specification.
- Let’s Meet on Friday. Weekly meetings are run on Fridays, time to be mutually agreed upon.
- Student Field Trip. Tentatively set for either Saturday or Sunday September 26 or 27.
What Does SAPAA Do?
Our role has evolved over the past decade. When started in 2001, the intent was to be a guild of sorts for a then very active provincial government Volunteer Stewardship program. This program recruited citizens to visit and report on sites that fell under the first of three provincial legislative frameworks: the Wilderness Areas, Ecological Reserves, Natural Areas and Heritage Rangelands (WAERNAHR) Act, Parks Act, and the Willmore Wilderness Act.
For a variety of reasons, the government run volunteer program has fallen by the wayside. Since 2023, SAPAA has tried to answer the question, ‘Can a voluntary organization, such as SAPAA, field a program akin to the one formerly run by the province?‘.
In answering this question, SAPAA strives to ‘do’ the following:
- Maintain information about the protected areas covered by the WAERNAHR Act (this website).
- Collect information about protected areas, with a current focus on WAERNAHR lands.
- Support other nonprofit organizations and individuals who share SAPAA objectives.
Furthering Reading on What SAPAA Does
For the uninitiated, it is recommended that you visit these links and, in the order, presented.
- Volunteer Stewardship – Backgrounder | SAPAA
- CBC Story – Volunteer Stewardship Program | SAPAA
- A Short Selected History of SAPAA | SAPAA
More Background (including past student site visits!)
How Does Project 3b Help?
What is iNaturalist?
Project 3b – iNaturalist for non-Naturalist ties into the second of SAPAA’s objectives, collecting information. For the uninitiated, iNaturalist is a free app and website where everyday people help document the living world by recording observations of plants, animals, and other organisms. The app suggests what species it might be, and a global community of naturalists helps confirm the identification. An observation then becomes part of a giant, public biodiversity database used by scientists and conservationists.
If the community agrees with the species identification attributed to an observation, it can be considered research grade and potentially used by projects. To meet this requirement, better photos, and contextual information helps.
Why Observations are Important?
The most common species are often the most important. For example, identifying invasive species, or noting the extent of a tree population may seem trivial. In aggregate, however, they may show invasive plant problems or the changing conditions due to climate change.
How Can A Little Knowledge Can Lead to Better Observations?
The application is easy to learn and use but a little more skill is required to create research grade observations. How can the casual iNaturalist user quickly learn the application and create the best possible submissions?
A Survey and Compilation of Existing Content
There are hundreds and likely many thousand pages on how to use and learn iNaturalist. Content is not the problem, contextualization and compilation are the issues. As a result, the specific deliverables for the project are:
- Perform a literature and information scan,
- Summarize the results,
- Determine whether promoting iNaturalist will result in good observations useful to SAPAA and/or other interested groups.
Beyond training, this project helps individuals improve their Outdoor Literacy. By doing so, this in turn increases public awareness of the importance of natural systems and contributes to the conversation on sustainability.
Next Steps
- Select the SAPAA Project for SOWK 303.
- Appoint a Project Manager from Your Team.
- Plan to meet weekly on Friday’s until early December.
- Sign up for iNaturalist.ca.
- Work the Project 3b Deliverables.
- Decide How to Use the Experience in Your Career/Life.
