@miked@dejayM I think you’ll be pleased with this.
I was planning to post a Dischisma ciliatum observed in 2003 and was confused by the date - all my West Coast observations were from much later dates.
Somehow or other I found this link on Google
Dated 2015 sadly never caught on but I think has so much to offer.
Background: "When the development of Century City began in 1996, the 250-hectare area was largely covered by invasive alien vegetation (mainly Port Jackson acacias) and a number of degraded wetlands.
My visit was in 2003 - think I must have been working nearby and was aware of the plans they had for the site.
I never did anything with the pictures, but kept a record of the GPS readings.
I see Alex Landsdowne agreed to one of the 2015 observations - he’s moved on to the site on other side of the Pond, but I might be able to contact him through Rondebosch Common FB.
Rambling on a bit (it’s the heat) - but I think iSpot has shown that past and present can be merged and old observations do have a role, showing here how the development (restoration) has progressed.
Of course this becomes increasingly important over time. I regret that the surveys a group of us did in urban areas of SE London 40 years ago were lost as were (I think) a load of surveys of ancient woodland across southern England I did a few years later. These latter ones I spent weeks typing in and analysing but then passed the data to others and did not keep a copy as anything to do with computers then was tricky.
It is interesting that these days entities want to keep data in one place and not let there be copies made by employees. This may be fine and sensible for anything GDPR related or sensitive in any way but for biological records I think it is dangerous to have just one or two repositories that could be hacked or otherwise destroyed. So it is important for each of the individual data suppliers to NBN atlas or GBIF to keep copies of their data preferably with more than one person.
Copies are a tricky call - my thoughts are THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE - so if you allow copies they need to be read-only …but then.
Wondering if there is a way for your work to be retrieved?
At Cape Point there was an enormous amount of work that Jayne and Duncan discovered in a pile of junk - they wanted to take the old “squares” data and try to find the original spots.
But I thought these were used to monitor alien vegetation, post fires and I wanted to record anything-in-sight.
The Shoosmiths original focus was Ericas but were happy to join me.
In the JUNK we found the old maps (copies of originals) which I scanned onto my computer (now returned to the Friends) - mainly locations of Erica and Orchids and I used these to see if we could locate the original sites - it was fun and we followed the fires to search for the fire-dependent species.
Howard Langley helped us a lot and we shared info with Ross Turner and the Orchid fellow (forgotten his name - Bill?) - lots of others encouraged us - so this is why i think the iSpot collection should be available to share and remain in one place.
West Coast National Park is another of my special sites - with lots more to add.
And now I’m hoping to retrieve the pics from Century City, scattered on my hard drive, and add them to this Project.
Wonder if there were any others.
M
@dejayM@miked
Couldn’t find the other FORUM project link but hoping that this one may be found hidden somewhere. Please help - it’s a worthwhile project -
Tony wrote:
Part of the Blue Community - Why not add it to the collection: tag “Blue Community”
For more please see (the comment) http://www.ispotnature.org/projects/blue-community
I thought you were suggesting the link should be added. I could have done that but it is already present
The whole Collection is pretty cool. I have the energy to make a Global Project based on the tag (your link is broken) and maybe, just maybe, the tag could be introduced to the UK Community - there are NO UK uses.
Lots of links were lost when we changed “something” in the early days.
This was definitely a PROJECT that Tony created - at least the tags work, but I was hoping to see what he wrote about the project.
Remember many links were lost and the dates became muddled. I still search my observations using two dates which I can correct by editing.
