Jana Wäldchen and her team from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry have played a key role in developing the plant identification app, Flora Incognita. We discussed with her how being able to identify different plants contributes to species diversity, which plant species are particularly under threat and how non-native species are suppressing local plants.
What role do Citizen Science projects such as Flora Incognita play in protecting the variety of species?
Jana Wäldchen: Projects such as Flora Incognita that involve the general public play two important roles. On the one hand, they simplify the identification process. Anyone who is interested in plants can now easily, quickly and fairly precisely put a name to an unknown species. This means that more attention is paid to plant variety and that people become more aware of nature and the need to protect it.
Naturally, documenting the variety of plant species also makes an important contribution. As a result, scientists and nature conservation authorities also benefit from the app. Thanks to the identified species and their location, extremely valuable data records can be created that provide information that is of relevance for research into species protection and biodiversity. In the long term, the data from the Flora Incognita app will make it possible to find new answers to questions such as: When do certain species flower, and where? How widely to the properties of a single plant species vary? How are the composition and locations of the plants shifting in response to climate change and the type of land use?
The Flora Incognita app has been in use for two years. What has changed during that time?
The goal of the project is to make it easier for people to identify plants, and in this way, to increase their awareness of the wide variety of species around them. We have received many emails and comments from users that confirm that we're taking the right approach towards achieving this goal. We're not just getting feedback about how easy it is to identify plants. Many users also write that this easy identification has broadened their view of the variety of species.
Comments such as "At last, we're not just 'blindly' walking through the forest!" or "This is a fun way of finding out more about the environment" show that the app is making an important contribution towards raising awareness of plant diversity. It is very satisfying to have achieved this goal. Plant identification plays an important part in species protection, since we only want to conserve the things that we know.
How does the app make plant identification easier?
