Format: ORAL

Stina Weststrand1,2 sa Krger1,2

1 Gothenburg Botanical Garden, Gothenburg, Sweden 2 Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden

In Sweden, as in many other countries, species knowledge is in decline. There are fewer specialists to teach the next generation and to update floras and keys. We need to use everything we can to help turn this trend around! Engage the general public as well as students at all levels. iNaturalist is a powerful tool in citizen science, such as a bioblitz or inventory competitions. Not only will people get a proposed species name for their observation, they will also be adding valuable data that later can be used in research. When scientists and other experts help identify the observations, a valuable direct link between the scientific community and the public is created. The project function in iNaturalist is a usable asset in for example a floristics course, and will make data from inventory projects accessible to the community. We will show examples from both a bioblitz for the general public and a floristics course at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.