Displaying items by tag: smokies phenology project

The calico pennant dragonfly (Celithemis elisa) is among 77 new species discovered in Great Smoky Mountains National Park over the last decade. Wikipedia Commons

Apps and public research help uncover new layers of life in Southern Appalachia

This article was originally published by Smoky Mountain News.

Visitors armed only with a free app and love of nature have documented more than 4,000 species in Great Smoky Mountains National Park since 2011, according to the nonprofit Discover Life in America, including 77 not previously documented in the park by anyone else. 

DLiA, which manages the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory project that aims to catalogue all species residing in the extremely diverse park, recently analyzed more than 71,000 records from the app, iNaturalist, to discover the impact these casual observations have made on the project.