Los Angeles River

• Intro
• Overview
• Organisms Tree
• Sampling Types
• Area Diversity
• Plants and Animals
• Detection Frequency
• Appendix

Overview

We ask our volunteer community scientists to use both eDNA and iNaturalist.

iNaturalist citizen scientists from around the world have made over 26 million observations of over 230,000 species. While iNaturalist provides a tremendous amount of data, there are limitations to photographic observations.  Some species are overrepresented and some species are underrepresented in iNaturalist because of what, where, and when people choose to take photos.

Instead of relying on people to record organisms that they find interesting, eDNA records all organisms that are in the area.  eDNA has its own set of limitations. Because we do not have DNA barcodes for all species, sometimes we can not match the DNA found in environmental samples to actual species. Small organisms that are more evenly distributed are more likely to be detected than large organisms that move in and out of an area.