Documenting Diversity: A Bioblitz of the Fibershed Watershed ft Damon Tighe
April 27 @ 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
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Participate in the national City Nature Challenge exploring the biodiversity within Point Reyes Station’s 1,350 acre Black Mountain Ranch!
Date
April 27, 2025
10AM – 2 PM
Location
Fibershed Learning Center
14000 Point Reyes – Petaluma Road Point Reyes Station, CA 94956
About this event
Learn about local plants, animals, fungi and insects while helping us all understand the diversity of organisms that share in Fibershed‘s watershed by participating in a BioBlitz using the iNaturalist platform. We will meet at the Fibershed Learning Center in Point Reyes Station for this opportunity to venture into a glimpse of the 1,350 acre private, wild land of Black Mountain Ranch where it is based.
- A BioBlitz is a focused survey of lands that bring experts and enthusiasts together to help generate a list of what lives there.
- iNaturalist is a free platform that allows you to get real time feedback on what organisms you are seeing and contribute them to the scientific community.
We will begin with an overview of what we know about the land from a historical and biodiversity perspective and then will spend about 3 hrs exploring and documenting the property with iNaturalist. A wrap up session will allow us to review what we discovered, get final identifications on things we saw and discuss what we learned. When you go into the land with a mission to see diversity, you will always notice more, and being in the land with other people will help expand the way you see.
The goal is not only to deliver a data set of what lives in the Fibershed Watershed, but to give you tools to see more diversity on any foray into the world.
- Special Note! Uploaded observations from this Bioblitz will contribute to the national, annual City Nature Challenge (April 25-28) for the San Francisco Bay Area region! To learn more, check out:
Instructor Bio:
Damon Tighe is a biotechnologist based in the San Francisco East Bay who trains teachers on bringing in cutting edge biotechnology like DNA sequencing, protein analysis, etc into classrooms across the western US. He moonlights as a naturalist with a focus on fungi and community science. He has over 90k observations on iNaturalist and more than 1,000 of those are fungi that are sequenced which are helping us to understand the unnamed fungal biodiversity in California.
IG: @damontighe
iNaturalist: damontighe
Pack List (required):
- hiking water bottle, packed trail lunch, and snacks
- hat and sunscreen
- comfortable shoes to hike in
- day-hike size backpack
- camera for photographing organisms (including the miniscule, large, and distantly visible)
- binoculars
- hiking water bottle and snacks
- sun-protective clothing
- lightweight warm jacket if it gets cold
Pack List (advised):
- sun-protective clothing
- lightweight warm jacket if it gets cold
- binoculars
- additional personal snacks, lunch, and beverages
- any spare batteries, memory cards, etc for cameras
- optional: computer or method of uploading photos while we review and add our image data to iNaturalist together during the last hour (wifi is available on site)
This event will predominantly take place outdoors and on foot during the first 3 hours. There will be a combination of hiking both on and off trail, however there will be many opportunities to pause during the hike while observing the different organisms we find.
We recommend packing light for the hike for the sake of carrying comfort and ease–attendees will be able to store their additional items in the classroom while we are on foot.
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