iNaturalist
More actions
| Kept by | iNaturalist |
|---|---|
| First published | 2008 |
| What it holds | Specimens and occurrences |
| Covers | Worldwide |
| Entries | 399,740,813 |
|---|---|
| Cannabis entries | 19,697 |
| Counted | 13 November 2026 |
| Data licence | Varies by datasetChosen by each observer for each observation; CC BY-NC unless the observer changes it |
|---|---|
| Access | Open |
| Website | inaturalist.org |
iNaturalist is an online platform on which people record the wild organisms they come across and identify what others have recorded.[1] The platform is run by iNaturalist, an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in California.[2] Each week it passes the observations that the community has identified and that their observers have licensed for reuse to GBIF.[3] On 13 November 2026 iNaturalist held 399.7 million observations made by 5.7 million observers.[4] Of these, 19,697 were of Cannabis.[5] Its research-grade observations made up the largest single dataset of Cannabis records in GBIF on that date, 10,061 of 35,440.[6][7]
Origins and organisation
Ken-ichi Ueda first thought of iNaturalist in 2005. It was launched in 2008 as the master's final project of Ueda, Nate Agrin and Jessica Kline at the School of Information of the University of California, Berkeley. Ueda began working with Scott Loarie in 2010. The two organised the project as iNaturalist, LLC in 2011. They then grew its community and launched its first mobile application. iNaturalist became an initiative of the California Academy of Sciences in 2014 and a joint initiative of the Academy and the National Geographic Society in 2017. It became an independent nonprofit organisation in 2023.[1] Its terms of use, revised on 11 July 2023, make it the owner and operator of the website, the mobile applications, the programming interface and the regional sites of the iNaturalist Network.[2] Local institutions support each regional site. Within their area they can see the true coordinates that the platform hides from public view for threatened species. They can also see the hidden locations of observers who affiliate with their site.[8]
From observation to research grade
An observation is "verifiable" when it has a date, coordinates and a photograph or sound and is not of a person or of a captive or cultivated organism. Other users add identifications to it. Until they agree it is labelled "needs ID". It becomes "research grade" when more than two-thirds of the identifiers agree on a species or a lower rank. It can also reach that grade when they agree on a taxon between family and species and vote that it can be identified no further. An observation is "casual" when it lacks a date, a place or a photograph or sound, or when the community votes it captive or cultivated.[9]
A plant counts as cultivated when it grew from seed that people planted in the ground or scattered. A weed that comes up unplanted in a garden, the descendants of planted plants and a garden plant spreading on its own beyond the garden all count as wild.[10] The platform can also cast a "not wild" vote of its own. It does so when at least ten other observations of the same genus or a lower taxon lie in the smallest county, state or country that contains it and at least 80 per cent of them are marked as not wild.[9]
Licences and the weekly export
Contributors keep the rights in what they post. Unless they choose otherwise, they license it under CC BY-NC, which allows reuse with credit and for non-commercial ends.[2] An observation's data (its date, place, taxon and observer) carries its own licence, set apart from the licences of its photographs and sounds. Each can be put under another Creative Commons licence or the CC0 waiver. Content left unlicensed is "all rights reserved".[11][12]
GBIF takes only data under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC.[12] Once a week iNaturalist exports the research-grade observations whose data carry one of those three, whatever the licence of their photographs. GBIF tries to take in each export the same week.[3] The export is a Darwin Core Archive. An observation whose identification or grade has changed enters or leaves GBIF with the next archive.[13] In GBIF the export forms one dataset, iNaturalist Research-grade Observations, registered in February 2012. It carries a single licence, CC BY-NC 4.0. On 13 November 2026 it held 173,568,706 records, the latest export taking in observations created up to 2 November 2026.[14] iNaturalist asks authors who use many of its records to cite a GBIF download by its DOI, which adds their paper to the dataset's citation count.[15]
Cannabis observations
Of the 19,697 observations of Cannabis on 13 November 2026, 12,861 were research grade, 1,859 were still labelled "needs ID" and 4,977 were casual. In all, 3,788 were marked as captive or cultivated.[5] iNaturalist files every one of them under a single species, Cannabis sativa. Below it the platform accepts the variety spontanea (1,601 observations) and the subspecies indica (135) and sativa (95).[16] Observers had obscured the location of 797 observations and made that of 416 private.[5] An obscured observation is shown at a random point inside a cell of 0.2 by 0.2 degrees, about 500 km² at the equator. A private one shows no location at all.[17]
Of the research-grade observations, 8,535 were under CC BY-NC, 1,248 under CC BY and 315 under CC0. Another 207 carried Creative Commons licences that GBIF does not take. The remaining 2,538 had no licence.[5] GBIF held 10,061 of them, most from Russia (3,866), the United States (1,851), Ukraine (683), India (368), Kazakhstan (366) and China (309). Of the 10,061, 9,600 were made in 2019 or later.[6]
Use in cannabis research
Ademola Aina and colleagues (2025) found feral stands in the United States through the iNaturalist application and by word of mouth. From them they collected seed of 1,815 female plants in 88 populations across 12 states in 2022 and 2023. By their count, iNaturalist held 1,799 observations of feral Cannabis in the United States in April 2025 and GBIF 1,216.[18]
Anna Halpin-McCormick and colleagues (2025) built a species distribution model for C. sativa from a GBIF download of 416 iNaturalist observations with photographs. They took a plant to be wild when its photograph showed no man-made object, it grew among other plants and the land around it looked unmanaged. By that test 302 of the 416 were wild or escaped. Removing duplicates left 234. The 137 east of the prime meridian went into the model, since the authors took Eurasia to be the centre of origin of Cannabis.[19]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "About". iNaturalist. iNaturalist. 26 September 2026. Archived from the original on 18 October 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Terms of use". iNaturalist. iNaturalist. 11 July 2023. Archived from the original on 27 October 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Which iNaturalist observations are exported for GBIF, and how often does this export happen?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 13 October 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "Observations". iNaturalist. iNaturalist. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Observations: Cannabis". iNaturalist. iNaturalist. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Occurrence search: iNaturalist Research-grade Observations, Cannabis L." GBIF. GBIF Secretariat. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence search: Cannabis L." GBIF. GBIF Secretariat. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "What's the iNaturalist Network? Which site should I affiliate with?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 4 June 2024. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "What is the Data Quality Assessment (DQA) and how do observations qualify to become 'Research Grade'?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 6 July 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "What does captive / cultivated mean?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 21 June 2024. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "What are licenses? How can I update the licenses on my content?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 12 September 2024. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 "How do licenses work on iNaturalist? Should I change my licenses?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 20 November 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "If an observation's ID or data quality grade changes, will that change be updated on GBIF?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 6 December 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "iNaturalist Research-grade Observations". GBIF. iNaturalist.org. doi:10.15468/ab3s5x. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "How should I cite iNaturalist?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 4 December 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "Taxon: Cannabis sativa". iNaturalist. iNaturalist. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "What is geoprivacy? What does it mean for an observation to be obscured?". iNaturalist Help. iNaturalist. 22 October 2026. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ Aina, Ademola; Wenger, Jonathan P.; Stanton, Eliot; Majumdar, Chandrani Gon; ElSohly, Mahmoud; Weiblen, George D.; Ellison, Shelby (1 July 2025). "Genetic diversity, population structure, and cannabinoid variation in feral Cannabis sativa germplasm from the United States". Scientific Reports. 15 (1) 20423. doi:10.1038/s41598-025-07912-8. PMC 12215616.
- ↑ Halpin-McCormick, A.; Maaz, T.M.; Kantar, M.B.; Barton, K.E.; Masalia, R.R.; Batora, N.; Law, K.; Kuntz, E.J. (2025). "Species distribution of Cannabis sativa: past, present and future". PLOS ONE. 20 (3) e0306007. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0306007. PMC 11906060.