Most of the Little Hunting Creek watershed is developed, but that does not mean that it does not support a broad variety of different organisms. That variety of life is called biodiversity and we can all pitch in to help characterize the biodiversity inhabiting Little Hunting Creek and its environs. When out enjoying nature, most of us are carrying powerful computers, our cell phones. Lately I have been really enjoying an App called iNaturalist, which can help us document our local biodiversity. Using iNaturalist is pretty easy; just take or upload a picture and either provide an ID or let the App make a suggestion based on the picture and your location. Experts and knowledgeable amateurs can then confirm, update or refine the identification. Over time, one can get a great idea of the organisms inhabiting a place. Consider our well-known jewel of a local park, Huntley Meadows. iNaturalist has a Project for Huntley Meadows Park. As you can see from the statistics below, more than 1,300 people have shared over 35,000 observations that have documented 2,435 species!
Through a project such as this one, peoples’ contributions help paint a picture of the biodiversity of an area. The American bullfrog, great blue heron, snapping turtle and red-winged blackbird are the most observed species, not surprising if you have ever ambled along the Huntley Meadows board walk. But one can dig in to look at any group of interest. For instance, I love snakes and have learned that 10 different species have been observed in Huntley Meadows. Now I can try to find them all, with new knowledge on places to look and times of year when past observations have been made to help guide me in my quest.
But what about Little Hunting Creek and iNaturalist? Well, it turns out there is already a small project for Little Hunting Creek Park (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/little-hunting-creek-park-alexandria-va?tab=species). But you can see from the map below that not many observations have been made in the region they have designated as Little Hunting Creek Park.
In fact, only 30 observations have been made in this area, representing just 27 species including beaver, several spiders and a number of plants. That said, one is able to draw any bounding box around an area, and iNaturalist will tabulate everything that has been seen in the area. Consider the map below, which more closely approximates the boundaries of the Little Hunting Creek watershed. That’s more like it. Nearly 1000 species have been documented in our area. There must be many more species in our area, but just scrolling through the different species is inspiring, and for me awe inspiring. We live in a beautiful place, and share it with a lot of truly fascinating neighbors (from bald eagles to pawpaw trees).
If you can start sharing observations of organisms living in and around Little Hunting Creek, we’ll get a better picture of the biological communities it supports. In addition, we are building a baseline of data, to which future observations can be compared. For example, we can track introduced species or responses to climate change. Moreover, all our pictures — along with the identifications that the community provides — help improve the algorithms that make automatic species identifications. And finally, the best part of using iNaturalist is that you start learning a lot more about the fascinating organisms around us, like this bicolored striped sweat bee that I found pollinating an evening primrose in my yard.
