Trout lily is named for its mottled leaves, which look like the markings found on brook trout. You can spot this charismatic target species from Georgia to Maine. (Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program)
The Appalachian Trail (AT) spans over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. The landscape along its sides, known as the AT corridor, includes both the remote peaks and valleys traversed by the trail and the countless towns and villages neighboring it. Because this vast swath of land spans a diverse range of ecosystems and climate zones, it is an excellent study area for investigating the ecological impacts of climate change—and we need your help!
Whether you’re walking home from work or embarking on a thru-hike, anyone near the Appalachian Trail can contribute to AMC climate research simply by taking photos with the iNaturalist app. By uploading photos of target species, you can generate valuable data about when and where certain plants are flowering and fruiting. Using these data, we can investigate how complex changes to the many climate zones of the East Coast are impacting the timing of plant lifecycle events. This information is essential as we seek to identify the most vulnerable species and places threatened by climate change.
Of course, you can’t understand plants without understanding the animals they interact with. The iNaturalist photos you take of birds, snakes, bugs, and other wildlife on the trail paint a broader picture of what’s happening in nature. This ecosystem-wide view is key to understanding the full impacts of change in a deeply interconnected world. Right now, we’re beginning to look more closely at the interactions between flowers and their pollinators. If you spot an insect interacting with a flower, be sure to snap a photo for us with iNaturalist! But regardless of pollinator status, all of the organisms you report along the AT corridor remind us of the value of this connected landscape as a home and throughway for nature’s wildlife.
About iNaturalist
iNaturalist is a tool that crowdsources plant and animal observations through a free app on your phone or tablet. Our project uses it to focus on the flowering seasons of plants throughout the Appalachian Trail corridor.
To Get Started:
- Download the free iNaturalist app and create an account.
- Turn on your phone’s location. This lets you share the location of the plants you photograph with the iNaturalist community.
- Take photos of flowers, especially our target species, using the iNaturalist app. Snap a photo of the whole plant, if possible, and a close-up of its flowers or fruit. It’s best to take photos in the iNaturalist app because this ensures that more accurate location data is logged. If you don’t have cell service, you can still take iNaturalist observations; the app can upload them once you return to service.
- Join AMC’s iNaturalist projects. By joining the “Flowers and Fauna along the Appalachian Trail Corridor” project, you can streamline your contribution to AMC’s research and get updates through project journal posts. (If you’re in the mountains of the Northeast, you can also learn about our alpine project here.) Be sure to select ‘allow researchers to see coordinates’ when you join the project to enable us to use the data you’ve collected. Observations not posted to our project are still accessible for research, so snap away!
Don’t forget to check back in on your iNaturalist submissions and learn about what you’ve spotted. iNaturalist has built-in identification technology, as well as a strong community of enthusiastic fellow naturalists who can help confirm a species and move your observation to “Research Grade”. This allows AMC scientists and other researchers to use it in our work.
The more photos we take, year after year, the more we can learn about the impacts of climate change throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and how we can best be stewards of the region.
Feeling competitive? Check out our new iNaturalist bingo card and compete with your friends and family to snap all 16 species. This bingo card includes species from both this AT corridor project and our Northeast Alpine Flower Watch project, so get ready for an adventure!
Learn More:
Help AMC Scientists Study Climate Change’s Effect on Alpine Plants