Assessment of volunteered geographic information for vegetation mapping

Vegetation mapping requires extensive field data for training and validation. Volunteered geographic information in the form of geotagged photos of identified plants has the potential to serve as a supplemental data source for vegetation mapping projects. In this study, we compare the locations of specific taxa from the iNaturalist platform to locations identified on both a fine-scale vegetation map and high-resolution ortho-imagery in open-canopy shrubland in San Clemente Island, CA. Due to positional uncertainty associated with the iNaturalist observations, as well as the presence-only nature of the data, it was not possible to perform a traditional accuracy assessment. We instead measured the distance between the location recorded by an iNaturalist observer for a given taxon and the closest mapped individual of that taxon. This distance was within 10 m for a majority of the observations (64%). When comparing the iNaturalist location to the closest individual detected through image interpretation, 87% of the observations were within 10 m. The discrepancy in agreement between the vegetation map and imagery is likely due to mapping errors. While iNaturalist data come with important limitations, the platform is an excellent resource for supporting vegetation mapping and other ecological applications.