Noah stands for networked organisms and habitats. Noah helps nature lovers discover local wildlife and aspiring citizen scientists contribute to current research projects. Think of Noah as a tool people can use to document and learn about their natural surroundings and as a technology platform research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. Cell phone scientists unite!

The Project Noah iPhone application has 3 modes:

Spottings: Grab a photograph of a plant or animal that you find interesting or want to learn more about, select the appropriate category, add some descriptive tags, and submit it. On our end, we capture the location details along with other important information and store it in our database which we\’ve nicknamed \”the ark\”.

Location-based Field Guide: See what kinds of plants and animals have been spotted near you and learn more about them. Search through a list view or explore a map view of the most recent spottings all based on your location. We work with local experts and volunteers to help verify spottings and provide detailed species information from the Encyclopedia of Life and Wikipedia.

Field Missions: Noah is all about documenting and discovering local wildlife. We work with labs, environmental groups, and various organizations to help them gather important data for their research projects. Missions can range from photographing squirrels or mushrooms to tracking migrating birds or invasive species. Field missions allow users to contribute to ongoing research projects, but they can also be for fun and exploration.

With our website, http://www.networkedorganisms.org, we are building a community hub where users can view submissions and talk about their findings. Users can also make submissions directly from the web.

Ultimately, we want to help people reconnect with nature and, at the same time, contribute to organizations that are working hard to catalog and preserve our planet\’s biodiversity.