Lacy Ground Fern

Hi Neil Ross -- I have just seen your wonderful set of images on Project Noah - In particular, I enjoyed your rainforest images. I would like to introduce you to a new Australian natural history website somewhat similar to project Noah called BowerBird. I have seen your wonderful image entries on Project Noah and your excellent identification skills and thought I would contact you. BTW -- I live in Melbourne Victoria.

I am on a mission to capture Australian Biodiversity for Australian Scientists to use to better understand our unique Australian biota.

I see so many wonderful images with associated GPS and date records. Records with GPS and Date are valuable scientific records which unfortunately I fear are being lost to science. I say "lost" because the information is not uploaded to the Australian National Biodiversity aggregator called "Atlas of Living Australia" (www.ala.org.au).

ALA currently aggregates data from all Australian Museums and Herbaria and it is used extensively by Australian and overseas scientists - particular to model changes in our Australian environment.

Here is an example: You can ask ALA to display the distribution of a Koala and then overlay that with a distribution of its eucalyptus foodplant. Then using these distribution points, you can model a temperature change of 0.5 or 1 or 5C over the next 50 to 100 years and watch what happens to the distribution of the Koala and its foodplant. However, models are only as good as the original dataset and this is why I say that your local records should be made available to the general scientific community -- we call you a "Citizen Scientists" and we believe that most of the future biodiversity data will be generated by people like you -- you see something and your record it and it gets uploaded to the national dataset.

ALA commissioned me two years ago to build a website dedicated to Citizen Science - called BowerBird - which was recently on 10 May 2013. In nutshell, here is how BowerBird works:

- There are a series of "Projects" that are created by people.
- Anyone can join these Projects and form a community of like-minded interests sharing their finds
- Someone uploads an image(s) of something and add a location (GPS) and date to their images
- Anyone in the Project community can then help to identify it, or comment on it, or tell their own story about that species, or Vote for that image, or describe that species etc.
- If the images have been submitted under the Creative Commons License 3.0, then the images and GPS/Date data will be automatically uploaded to ALA and add a new dot on a map for that species.

BowerBird provides a social framework - just like a Field Naturalist Club - for members and their data is added to the National Biodiversity dataset.

I would be very keen to attract you to join BowerBird and to contribute across a wide range of animal and Plant Projects. You take such a variety of great fungal, insect and mammal photos.

Here is the URL to the BowerBird Arachnid Images: http://www.bowerbird.org.au/projects/39/...

and another to the Fungal Project: http://www.bowerbird.org.au/projects/4/s...

and yet another to the Marine Project: http://www.bowerbird.org.au/projects/6/s...

There is a Rainforest Project bbut at present has only 4 observations: http://www.bowerbird.org.au/projects/707...

Please do keep your Project Noah account but I do hope that you will consider sharing some of your wonderful sightings and knowledge with Australian Projects and Australian Scientists.

If you are interested, the BowerBird website is: www.bowerbird.org.au.

My name is Ken Walker (kwalker@museum.vic.gov.au ) and I a senior scientist at Museum Victoria and one of the 3 developed of BowerBird.

If you contact me, I will send you a BowerBird User Guide and offer to assist you where ever possible.

Thanks for your time and efforts.

Cheers,

Ken