Flora Incognita

Nature conservation faces great challenges:

• The need for high spatial and temporal resolution data on the state of nature is increasing, as is the need for effective management approaches.
• The population’s knowledge of species is declining, which means there are fewer and fewer specialists to collect data on nature and landscapes.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and citizen science can be a building block to meet these challenges in the future: promising methods to support monitoring arise from semi- and fully automated data collection and analysis methods, for example via plant identification apps such as Flora Incognita, which has been developed as part of our project. 

Aim

Our goal is to simplify, accelerate and increasingly automate global biodiversity monitoring through automated species identification in citizen science projects. Our specifically developed AI technology for species identification provides large amounts of data for this, and targeted science communication additionally contributes to raising public awareness for the protection of biodiversity.

How to participate

1. Install the free app "Flora Incognita", grant it access to your location.

2. Take a close-up picture of a wild plant (any wild plant, it's your choice!). Depending on the specimen you might be asked to take additional pictures of certain plant parts.

3. The app will identify the species or give you some species suggestions. You can compare the provided species fact sheets with the individual plant you have found.  Confirm the identification via the green tick on the screen.

4. Your plant record is saved in your personal plant collection list. In addition, the anonymized record is saved in our database.

 

Needed equipment

- a smartphone

- the free app "Flora Incognita"

About funding

Funding bodies: Federal Ministry for the Environment Nature Conservation Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection Germany

Federal Agency for Nature Conservation Germany

Thuringian Ministry for the Environment Energy and Nature Conservation

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