Biodiversity on public lands: How community science can help

Species inventories are crucial for conservation but are difficult to assemble and maintain. Bioblitzes, which encourage the public to document biodiversity in a particular area and timeframe, may offer useful information, but their integration with other datasets poses challenges. We investigated the potential contribution of bioblitzes to natural resource management using observations from the United States National Park Service (NPS) 2016 Centennial Bioblitz. Through automated cross-referencing over 19,000 iNaturalist “research-grade” observations from 107 national parks with existing park inventory lists, we matched 86% of species documented in the Bioblitz to NPS species lists based on current taxonomy and matched another 6% of species using alternative scientific names through our matching process in R. Of the remaining 13.5% that did not match the NPS species lists, 84% of the unmatched species were manually found within the lists or were outside the boundaries of the park, identifying 141 native species that were unrecorded in NPS species lists. Many introduced species were recorded more often in parks closer to cities. Parks near cities also drew more participants. Our study shows how public participation through iNaturalist and bioblitzes can facilitate biodiversity monitoring across large spatial scales.