City Nature Challenge puts local biodiversity on the map

The Albuquerque City Nature Challenge, taking place from April 24-27, is inviting everyone to become citizen scientists through documenting the city’s biodiversity in Bernalillo, Sandoval and Valencia Counties, as part of a global collaborative effort to document wildlife observations of all kinds. 

R.H. Mallory Center for Community Geography Associate Director Laurel Ladwig said the City Nature Challenge is a way to get people to know the nature around them while helping create an urban biodiversity map using the iNaturalist app or website, and that Albuquerque has participated in the challenge since 2019.

Ladwig said that habitat is everywhere in the city, citing her experience with some trees in a restaurant parking lot along I-25. 

“In those trees, there was a bushtit — this darling little gray bird — nest,” Ladwig said. “The bushtit dad was over in another tree in the same parking lot, smooshing a caterpillar to bits and then flying over to the nest. Nature's everywhere, and we want people specifically to be looking for wild beings in urban areas.” 

Ladwig said the Center for Community Geography is helping the Backyard Refuge Program put together an interactive urban biodiversity map that is set to launch this summer. 

UNM Ph.D. student in Geography and Environmental Studies Katie Slack is building the map using open source programming methods and City Nature Challenge observation data from 2021-2024. 

“The interactive web map is user-focused and provides an exploratory kind of method for users to look at the data and come to their own kind of conclusions about it, as well as a way for people to begin interacting with all of the amazing biodiversity we have here in Albuquerque,”  Slack said. 

Slack said there were 60,000 observations from the four years worth of data being mapped. 

“That kind of rich, biodiverse dataset is really hard to get with a team of researchers, so, it is really also highlighting the strengths of citizen science,” Slack said. 

Ladwig said the iNaturalist data collected on UNM’s Main Campus is being used to work with the Office of Sustainability and Grounds and Landscaping to create more pollinator patches on campus, citing the patch of sunflowers in Parsons Grove near Sarah Reynolds Hall. 

“That's amazing habitat in summer and fall for the pollinators, and then winter food for goldfinches, and then again, after the seeds have all been eaten, we trimmed the stems to different heights so that the cavity-nesting bees will have a place to nest,” Ladwig said. “Pollinator habitat is not just pretty flowers. It's also providing for the full life cycle of the pollinators.” 

Students can get involved by making observations on iNaturalist and by adding native plants to their residence or caring for spaces in “wildlife-friendly” ways, like not using pesticides or leaving leaf litter for insects and lizards, Ladwig said. 

Slack said they hope the map project is a stepping stone for people to get more involved in “protecting our more-than-human neighbors.” 

“We've kind of created our cities in a way that really sets us apart from nature, even though that is kind of a false dichotomy, because we are meant to exist in a balanced ecosystem,” Slack said. “Getting back to that balance not only is respectful and good for our plant and animal neighbors, but also benefits human society as well.”  

Slack said that thriving ecosystems in urban areas are important for “creating resilience” to climate impacts.  

“We're going to experience things like heat waves and drought more severely, but if we have more vegetated areas, which are also creating habitat, then we see those effects lowered,” Slack said. 

Paloma Chapa is the multimedia editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at multimedia@dailylobo.com or on X @paloma_chapa88

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