Drawing on over 140 million species records collected by volunteer recorders, recording schemes and citizen scientists, biodiversity data has transformed our understanding of the natural world over the past decade. From tracking shifts in species distributions to informing national biodiversity indicators, the research demonstrates the growing importance of citizen science for long-term monitoring in addressing environmental challenges.

Which models are we using, and why?

We are running two models within iRecord app: Pl@ntNet (in the Plant List Survey) and Naturalis’ Nature Identification API (NIA). The Naturalis AI works on a series of interconnected models, the first of which identifies which taxonomic group is central in the photo. The photo is then sent to the relevant classifier for its group and likely identifications are returned with confidence scores.