Last updated: October 5, 2022

Here is the current species and observation lists for the 2022 Macaulay Honors College Randall’s Island Park BioBlitz:

Download (XLSX, 408KB)

The first sheet in the file above is a summary page with our species count (currently at 387 species!) which is likely to increase as some of the teams send back their final reports. You will also find a full species list, a list of all observations (includes multiple observations of the same species), and then individual observation lists for each BioBlitz team.

You can check out the iNaturalist observations at the project page for this BioBlitz. There is a button on the right side to download a csv file of all of the observations. For step-by-step instructions on downloading iNaturalist data, check out our Data Download Guide. As the iNaturalist community confirms more IDs, it is possible that the species number listed here will change. Research Grade (confirmed) iNaturalist observations (as of 10/4/22) have been added to the Excel file above.

Here is a sample of what you can download from iNaturalist (as downloaded on October 4, 2022): 2022 Randalls Island BioBlitz ALL iNaturalist observations 10_04_22 and a file that explains the columns: iNaturalist-Observation-File-Help-2022. Remember that these observations are geotagged, so you can map them if you are interested. You can always download an updated list from iNaturalist by going to the project link and clicking on Observations and then “Export observations” to the right of the screen. We recommend only using Research Grade observations for your projects, as these have IDs confirmed by the iNaturalist community.

Randall’s Island Park Alliance and its partners have conducted some surveys on vegetation, wildlife, and water quality prior to our BioBlitz. Those data are available on RIPA’s Parks as Lab website. Randall’s Island Park also has an iNaturalist project that collects all iNaturalist observations made on the island (including those made at our BioBlitz): Biodiversity of Randall’s Island. Click here to download the BioBlitz map of Randall’s Island.

More Data:

The Data menu (left side panel) links you to all previous Macaulay BioBlitz data sets. Click here to see all of those posts together. Please keep in mind that 2020 and 2021 were Remote BioBlitzes and the data were collected differently in those years.

The NYC arm of the global City Nature Challenge, a four-day city-wide public BioBlitz run entirely on iNaturalist, is organized out of Macaulay by Dr. Kelly O’Donnell. The City Nature Challenge: NYC umbrella project will link you to all six years of CNC:NYC results. Download those data in the same way you would download iNaturalist data for the Randall’s Island BioBlitz.

There also have been some non-Macaulay-affiliated BioBlitzes in NYC. Including:

Other Useful Databases:

  • iNaturalist – a global database and social network for ecological observations
  • NYBG’s C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium – represents almost 200 years of botanical documentation. All have coordinates if you are interested in mapping the records to see what was found in some previous BioBlitz locations.
  • NYC Open Data – a collection of public datasets collected by the city and its partners. Includes tree censuses, water quality measures, and other environmental data.
  • Natural Area Conservancy Map – a map featuring data on green space and built space across the five boroughs of NYC.
  • Encyclopedia of Life – a curated encyclopedia of every multicellular species on earth.
  • Arctos – this is an access point to a number of online museum collections.
  • eBird – this database features data reported from citizen bird sightings.
  • USDA PLANTS Database – a database kept by the USDA that reports many useful characteristics about plant species, including their status as native or exotic/invasive.