The National Geographic Society and the National Park Service are teaming up for a BioBlitz in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on May 30-31, 2008. The concept of a BioBlitz is to cover a broad area of ground within 24 hours, finding, identifying and mapping as many species as possible.
The organizers will pull together teams of 8-10 volunteers that travel with a biologist with specific taxonomic expertise. They stick to that biologists area of expertise and try to cover as much ground as possible in the allotted time. While the exercise isn’t systematic in its inventory, recent BioBlitzes in other parks have returned impressive scientific results. For instance, new undescribed species of bacteria and arthropods have been found and it’s common to record new species distributions.
This is the second annual BioBlitz. If you are interested in participating or would like more information, you can e-mail bioblitz@ngs.org.
