Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.
Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere.
Project Noah is a tool that nature lovers can use to explore and document wildlife and a technology platform research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. The purpose of the project is to mobilize and inspire a new generation of nature lovers. It began as an experiment to see if we could build an app for people to share their nature sightings and has evolved into a powerful global movement for both amateurs and experts. The name “Noah” is an acronym that stands for networked organisms and habitats.
You can start by signing in with any of your existing online accounts including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, Windows Live and Aol. If you don't have one of these accounts, we invite you to sign up for one to quickly join the project. Once you've logged in for the first time you'll be presented with your "My Noah" dashboard. Here you can upload, manage and view your spottings and browse spottings submitted by the community in real-time. If you have an iPhone or Android smartphone, we have mobile applications available to help you connect to Project Noah on the go.
At Project Noah we value your privacy and your sensitive personal account information and that’s why we rely on trusted services like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft to validate and authenticate your accounts. We do not store your passwords. In fact, we don’t even get to see them. We feel this is the safest and most secure way of handling your personal account information and that is why we require you to have an existing account in order to join.
Project Noah Rangers are an important part of our active community. Rangers welcome new users, help identify species, remove inappropriate content, and ultimately support our mission to bring awareness to our planet’s biodiversity. Rangers are selected based on their knowledge and contributions to the community and receive a special Ranger patch that can be seen on their patch pages or when they leave comments or suggestions. If you think you have what it takes to be a Ranger or if you would like to nominate someone to become a Ranger, please email us at rangers@projectnoah.org.
When you sign up to Project Noah, we encourage you to follow users who interest you. For example, if you love reptiles, you can follow Project Noah members who contribute great reptile spottings. To follow someone, just click on their profile photo. This will take you to their public profile page where you will see a “follow spotter” button you can click on. By following people, you can customize your Project Noah experience and control what kind of spottings come into your main feed for viewing. When you’re logged in and on your home page, right above the activity stream you will see some options to filter spottings. If you click on the “following” filter you’ll only see contributions made by the users you’re following.
Your profile page is what everyone sees when they want to learn more about you. We encourage you to fill out your profile page so people know where you’re from, what you’re interested in, and what your background is. Your profile page is also a great place to promote your website or blog. If you want people to be able to contact you, you can add an email address as well. Our community is really the heart of Project Noah and by filling out your profile page you become more than just a photo submitter.
Once you're signed into your "My Noah" dashboard, you can create a spotting from your iPhone and Android mobile application. Simply click the "New Spotting" button and you'll be presented with the option to take a photo of a wildlife encounter or upload a photo of an existing spotting. If you don't have either of these devices we welcome you to upload spottings through our web interface through your "My Noah" dashboard. There you'll find the "Add new spotting" button which will guide you through the step-by-step process.
We encourage you to share as much information as possible about your encounter. Add a clear and accurate description of the organism and its habitat as well as any relevant notes. The most important piece of information is where you found it. Make sure you record, as precisely as you can, the exact location where you found the organism. Remember to tread lightly and always respect the wildlife you encounter.
The best submissions are of an individual species with several clear photos and detailed notes. This remains true whether you’ve encountered an orchid or an orca. We understand that sometimes you might not have the chance to snap multiple photos or even one properly focused photo and that is OK. Our community enjoys learning about the circumstances leading up to your encounter and providing more information along with more photo angles can help tremendously with identification. Although sunsets and landscapes make for beautiful photographs, we are focused on documenting specific species so unless there is a sea gull flying across the sunset or a grouping of pine trees in the middle of the landscape, please refrain from submitting those types of photos. There are other great sites for that sort of photography.
Right now we support YouTube and Vimeo links only. This means you must have already uploaded your video to either site. In order to add a video to an existing spotting click on "Edit this spotting" and then add your video link in the "Add a video" section. Once you're done, click the save button. When submitting a new spotting, you can just add the link directly to the "Add a video" section. At this time, you can only add one video to a spotting so pick a good one! Remember, we are only looking for videos you have taken that are directly related to your spotting.
Yes we did. The former "Invertebrates" category is now labeled as "Arthropods". Arthropods are mainly land invertebrates including insects, arachnids, myriapods and crustaceans. We feel this is a much more accurate title for the category. Furthermore, mollusks (e.g., squid, slugs, snails, worms, etc.) and other remaining marine invertebrates (e.g., nudibranches, jellyish, starfish, etc.) will now belong in the "Other" category.
Project Noah was created to help people reconnect with nature and learn more about biodiversity around the world. We celebrate global biodiversity and we want to make sure we protect ecosystems for future generations. At this time, if we find out that a submitted spotting is of a critically endangered species in the wild, we will zoom out the map and drop the location pin at a higher and more general level. This way, exact coordinates will not be available. In the future, we will try to automate this process by comparing submissions to a list of known endangered species. If you have more questions or are part of an organization that wants to work with us on this, please email us at team@projectnoah.org.
For your spotting to appear in the activity stream and other public areas of the site, you’ll need make sure you’ve completed all the required fields when creating a new spotting. When you create a new spotting, your photos are immediately uploaded. However, these photos will remain in an unpublished draft state until you’ve completed adding all the required fields. The spotting needs to have a photo, category, location and common name or "Needs ID" selected, in order to leave a draft state.
Although we technically do accept pet photos, it is not our focus. The reason why we created a pet category is because many users share pet photos when they are getting familiar with our website or experimenting with our mobile apps and we wanted to give our users some time to get comfortable and see what our community is all about. Once settled in, we ask that you focus your sights and your cameras on true wildlife. When submitting photos of zoo animals, we ask that you make it clear in your notes. Zoos play a key role in exposing us to a wide variety of plants and animals and many zoos are instrumental in rehabilitating injured animals and protecting endangered species. Sadly, as more species go extinct in the wild, zoos are becoming a last refuge for many plants and animals and it’s important to highlight those efforts and bring awareness to those species.
We have four classes of patches available for you to earn. "Spottings" patches are earned by the number of spottings you've contributed overall to Project Noah. To earn "Mission" patches you'll have to join and contribute spottings to specific missions that have special requirements on the category and type of submissions they're looking for. "Special achievements" are earned through interesting relationships between the spottings you submit. For example, if you upload spottings from at least three countries you will earn the “Globe spotter” . "Specialist" patches are reserved for people who submit a significant amount of spottings for a specific wildlife category. For example, if you upload a significant number of fungi spottings you will be deemed a specialist in that category.
When creating our patches, we were influenced by the merit badges from the Boy Scouts of America. These patches help identify the specific strengths of our members. They also encourage new members to continue contributing to the project. Ultimately, awarding patches is a fun way for us to recognize our community members and all their contributions.
With Project Noah we want to help you learn more about the wildlife that's around you. When you submit spottings, other community members can make species suggestions (also known as species IDs) to help you identify species or to point you toward helpful species information. All community members can then decide if they agree with the suggestion by voting for it. You can flag your spottings for help with species identification during the submission process too and you can also suggest species IDs while browsing through the mobile field guide. The ID suggestions process, in addition to helpful comments from our community members and Project Noah Rangers, is a powerful way to crowdsource the identification of species.
Submitted spottings are categorized as either “identified” or “not identified” throughout our site. Spottings are defined as identified when they have a scientific name entered in the scientific name field, a reference link added or a species suggestion with at least 3 votes. If there are multiple species suggestions all with 3 votes or more, then the spotting is not considered identified. Spottings are defined as “not identified” when the user checks the “help me ID this species” check box during the submission process or when a user leaves the spotting title blank.
We're always on the look out for sites that serve as online field guides. Here are some of the sites we think have great resources for classifying and identifying wildlife: Wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Life, Discover Life, Bug Guide, What Bird, Audubon Guides, What's That Bug, eNature, Butterflies & Moths, Marine Species Portal, Spider Guide, USDA Plants Database.
We have many generous community members who dedicate a lot of time to help you identify your spottings. When someone suggests a species ID for your spotting, take a look at the suggested information and do some of your own research to see if you agree. If you do, you should update your spotting to reflect this new information. If you suggest a species ID that you know is correct and the spotting never gets updated, leave a comment as a reminder and encourage the user to check out your suggested ID. If this doesn’t work, reach out to one of our Project Noah Rangers or email us at team@projectnoah.org for additional help.
To join a mission, find one you think is relevant and you can contribute to most significantly. Once you've found one you're interested in, simply click on the "Join mission" button in the mission detail and it'll be saved to your mission list when you submit a new spotting. You can join and leave missions from our website and our mobile applications.
We’re always on the lookout to partner with dedicated organizations and groups. To add a mission, please email us at missions@projectnoah.org.
In the event that you come across a submitted photo that a user does not have the rights to share you can use the flagging button on the spotting detail page to notify us of any inappropriate or inaccurate content. You can also send us an email with the URL of the specific spotting.
In the case that someone has disregarded our terms & conditions or community rules, you can use the flagging button on the spotting detail page to notify us of any inappropriate or inaccurate content. You can also send us an email with the URL of the specific spotting.
Absolutely, Project Noah's aim is to document real-time encounters with nature. Our iPhone application is the tool for making these encounters fun and easy to document. The app is available in the iTunes AppStore.
We're excited to announce that we have an Android app available in the Mobile Marketplace.
We welcome you to use our web interface to upload spottings. We are constantly trying to push the boundaries for what types of devices we can use to help document nature. Stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter pages as well as our blog for updates and announcements.
