09/12/2019

Student and Alumni News

Preliminary results from the September 7 and 8 Macaulay BioBlitz indicate that the class of 2022 has set great new milestones for the annual event. The entire sophomore class participated in the two-day academic event, trekking through Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery and the Gowanus Canal area to identify as many of the organisms living there as possible. Students worked in shifts to collect data alongside local naturalists, CUNY faculty, and scientists at these iconic Brooklyn locations.

Dr. Kelly O’Donnell, one of the event directors, reports: “This year’s BioBlitz already has amazing results. We more than doubled our previous BioBlitz iNaturalist records for observation and species numbers with (currently) 2460 observations and 540 species!”

These numbers are expected to rise as participants continue to upload their observations to iNaturalist and the team tallies other data. All data collected during the event will be available free through the iNaturalist platform and on the Macaulay website.

Two Macaulay students contributed an outsize amount of data. Nancy Li from City College has the top number of observations  and Yaas Azmoudeh (also City) was the top student species finder.

Macaulay BioBlitz 2019 was sponsored by the Green-Wood Historic Fund and Gowanus Canal Conservancy. Photos, top: Green-Wood and Ben Ross.

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