Last spring, Columbia participated in its first City Nature Challenge. Nearly 103,000 people participated in the international campaign meant to help find, document and share urban wildlife, with nearly 300 participants in Columbia alone.
From April 24 to 27, Columbia residents participated in one of the 20-plus organized nature events or had the opportunity to document wildlife on their own, which was then submitted to the international challenge.
The challenge originated in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco that encouraged people to find biodiversity in their cities and submit their findings. Since then, it has become international, with over 700 cities across the globe now participating.
Sierra Jaeger is a fifth-year doctoral student studying plant and insect interactions and one of the co-organizers of the Columbia City Nature Challenge.
Jaeger explained that the organization uses the free, easy-to-use iNaturalist app. It allows users to upload photographs and sound recordings to an open database, enabling scientists and researchers to use collected data for conservation and research.
In last year's event, using the iNaturalist app, participants in Columbia obtained 9,044 observations and identified 1,912 species within four days, according to the City Nature Challenge website.
This includes 75 new species that had never been documented within the Columbia Area. For instance, during last years challenge a participant identified a rare moth species at Peachtree Rock.
Grant Foster, a doctoral student in biology and an additional co-organizer of the challenge, was inspired to incorporate a City Nature Challenge in Columbia after a peer expressed her sucess in creating a challenge in New York City. He introduced the idea to several grad students and they began to form a team.
Foster said he often uses the app's collected data as a guide in his research. The app is helpful in his work, which often involves creating species distribution models, he said.
"It’s turning into real data, things that we can actually do, science and conservation, by taking those photos, making occurrence records, then scientists all over the world can use it,” Foster said.
Eric LoPresti, an assistant professor who specializes in botany, said that students learned a lot from last year's event. He hoped more students would show up for events this year as well, he said.
"Hopefully, we'll inspire people to go out and take data or do some native plant gardening in their yard or just do something that increases habitat value or generates more data," LoPresti said.
In an urban area such as Columbia, nature can be hard to recognize. Still, there are often migrating birds, insects and even a bloom of rare lilies all right under the noses of passersby, according to LoPresti.
Jaeger expressed a similar sentiment, noting the local wildflowers growing in the sidewalk and the number of possible caterpillars living in the oak trees on campus.
"We often think of nature as something we have to go to. We have to drive a few hours to go on a hike, but there's actually nature everywhere," Jaeger said.
This year, the challenge hosted over 20 free events, including fish sampling, moth light sheeting and a new event called the caterpillar walk, according to Jaeger and LoPresti. This is an expansion of last year's events, and they hoped to see an increase in observations and collaboration.
The events were distributed over the course of the weekend and took place in several aquatic and natural landscapes within the Columbia area.
"In all of these different events, we’re encouraging students to connect and collaborate, and we’ve seen a lot of them get really excited together and plan explorations after the event," Jaeger said.
Jaegar said that the experts who hosted these events were selected from several local organizations, including the Midlands Nature and Bird Alliance, the South Carolina Native Plant Society and even USC professors.
Foster said the event's main goals were to help people build connections with the natural world and learn more about the ecosystems around them.
“At the end of the day, what I’m most excited about is how many people we can get making some different relationships with nature,” Foster said.
While the organizers were excited to see this year's turnout of participants and collected data, they were also enthusiastic about individuals connecting with the outdoors.
"It's always been fun, focusing on the community and the engagement and getting people outside, just participating in nature," Jaeger said.