Agenda Doc 28314

Nova Scotia Herpetofauna Atlas the 21st century remake

Carter E. Feltham1, Jeffie McNeil1

1Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, Kempt, NS

The Nova Scotia Herp Atlas was an ambitious project undertaken from 1999 to 2003 to involve community scientists in documenting the distribution of reptiles and amphibians in Nova Scotia, resulting in 7337 observations across the province.  In 2021 the project was resurrected and re-developed to make use of modern tools to document herpetofauna populations, while still allowing comparisons to the original herp atlas project. This project employs the use of a community science-based application called iNaturalist®. In under 2 years this project has seen great success, with >1300 observers and >7000 observations. Additional tools to promote the project and provide alternate reporting methods for those who do not wish to use iNaturalist are under development.   This study presents a summary of the project so far and plans for the remaining 3 years.

Keywords: Herpetofauna, Reptiles, Amphibians, Citizen science, community science, volunteers

Presentation type: Poster

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