Happy Holidays and Hitting A Million

Happy holidays from everyone at Notes from Nature and a huge thanks for an amazing year.  So far, and the year isn’t quite done yet, we’ve totaled 430,423 classifications.  Considering we are this close to  900,000 classifications, that is even more incredible.   Nearly half our classifications came just this year!

For many of our devoted transcribers and classifiers, this may come as no surprise.  We have tried hard to make some tasks more simple and discrete, and this has really made things faster and hopefully also helped get more people involved.  We also launched a whopping 87 expeditions this year, and had 68 (so far) finish in 2018.

So here is a question.  When do we hit a million classifications?  We hope soon!  Current rates suggest sometime in mid to late March, but can we lower that timeline?  Our best month so far in 2018 was November, with 53,019 classifications.  What are the chances we could hit a million by end of February?  Ambitious?  We think it could happen and we’ll be pushing hard ourselves to keep getting up interesting content and new expeditions.  We’ll also be announcing some great new features and improvements that we hope makes Notes from Nature that much easier, better and interesting.  More on that very soon!

Happy Holidays from everyone at NFN and thanks for taking notes from nature.

A holiday-themed specimen above from the University of Florida Herbarium.  Frankincense comes from the genus Boswellia and especially  Boswellia sacra (shown above).The resin of the tree is what is harvested, and used as incense.  It has been used in religious ceremonies for millennia and was one of the gifts brought by the Three Wise Men.  Over-harvesting and conversion of frankincense woods to agriculture are threats to the long-term persistence of Boswellia.