SPRING TOWNSHIP, Pa.- With Earth Day approaching, lots of people are looking to do something to connect with the environment.
The City Nature Challenge could be just the thing. It combines nature and tech with an important goal.
“Being outside in nature is just great for the mind, the body and the soul,” says Bryan Wang, a PSU Berks Professor and the Berks County coordinator for City Nature Challenge.
City Nature Challenge is a global bio event that began in California and has been happening for the last 11 years across the world.
Wang says the challenge uses the mobile app ‘iNaturalist’.
“When you’re taking a picture of a creature or a plant using iNaturalist, then you’re really documenting the presence of that species in that particular place in time,” says Wang. “That can be really useful for conservation scientists throughout the world.”
The City Nature Challenge is a four-day period where people are asked to go out and observe nature, take photos and then upload them to the app.
“It’s a way of getting closer to nature,” says Wang. “They’re going to learn a little bit about the things that they’re observing in their local environments and they’re going to be gathering data for these conservation scientists.”
It can help scientists understand and document changes.
“A pretty famous one is how the chickadees around us have changed over time,” says Wang. “[It] used to be that we had a lot of black cap chickadees, [but] Carolina chickadees have moved in as the climate has warmed a little bit.”
This is the second year Berks County is participating in the City Nature challenge.
“Last year for our first year we had over 235 observers making over 4,000 independent observations of 900 different species in the county,” says Wang. “We’re looking for even more participation this year.”
The observation period will run from Friday April 24 through Monday April 27, 2026.
WFMZ-TV | Caitlin Rearden
WFMZ-TV | Caitlin Rearden
WFMZ-TV | Caitlin Rearden