Identifying native and invasive aquatic plants can be easy with a phone app
Print
EmailAfter collecting information, reporting and sharing it will help add to the knowledge of plant life in Michigan’s lakes.
Have you ever been kayaking or canoeing on the water and noticed a plant you did not recognize? That’s a good time to take a closer look, especially if it’s a plant you’ve never seen before. You may be observing an invasive species, something that is non-native to Michigan and causes harm to Michigan’s economy, environment or human health.
Not sure what you are looking at? Many phone apps use image recognition to help identify what you see. Often it will be a native species. But what do you do if you have identified an invasive species? This online flowchart will help you know what to do if you do find an invasive species.
iNaturalist app
One app that uses image recognition technology is iNaturalist. To use iNaturalist, you will need to create a free account. Then take a photo of the plant you are observing and choose “view suggestions” based on similar photos. By looking at the list of similar species you may be able to identify what you see. For submerged aquatic plants especially, there are many native species that look like invasive species. But even if you can’t identify an aquatic plant, you can still report the species with a general identification to iNaturalist and share your data. On iNaturalist other participatory scientists may view your posted photos and offer an identification suggestion.
Taking good photos makes a difference, too. Aquatic plants often don’t have flowers present, so it’s good to focus on showing the number of leaves along the stem and the characteristics of those leaves when you take photos. Aquatic plants that are submerged can be collected and then photographed when laid out on a laminated white piece of paper with a scale bar (Sample online for printing) or floating in a white tray filled with water.
Report invasives to MISIN
If you do find an invasive species, you should also report it to the Midwest Invasive Species Information System (MISIN), especially if it is a watch list species. MISIN is a regional effort to provide early detection and response resources for invasive species. MISIN hosts a platform where scientists and participatory scientists can report invasive species. These reports are received by state management agencies who will respond with the help of local partners to new invasive species detections. Because of the direct connection to state management agencies, responses to MISIN reports will be much faster than responses to iNaturalist reports.
For the MI Paddle Stewards training course, we report the invasive plants we find to MISIN and native species to iNaturalist. If you have taken the time to identify native plants, please add this data to iNaturalist. By reporting species through MISIN or iNaturalist, you are adding to the knowledge of Michigan’s lakes and helping people better spot changes over time. Scientists also use the data in iNaturalist as part of local, regional or international studies. While some inland lakes in Michigan are part of the MiCorps Cooperative Lakes Monitoring Program and have volunteers actively monitoring for exotic aquatic plant species, many more lakes have very little data available about the plants present in them and reports in iNaturalist are very important.
Michigan Sea Grant helps to foster economic growth and protect Michigan’s coastal, Great Lakes resources through education, research and outreach. A collaborative effort of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University and its MSU Extension, Michigan Sea Grant is part of the NOAA-National Sea Grant network of 34 university-based programs.
This article was prepared by Michigan Sea Grant under award NA24OARX417C0157-T1-01 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce through the Regents of the University of Michigan. The statement, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Commerce, or the Regents of the University of Michigan.
