KZN Atlas Report 3-Aug-11 to 17-Aug-11

The big news is that we are at 88.7% coverage, with 90% now within imminent reach.
What is even more encouraging is that we are also steadily increasing our two and seven card coverage as well, having moved from 57.2% to 57.6% and 21.1% to 21.3% respectively.
These may not sound very high, but they represent 5 and 3 pentads, which if you do the multiplication, means 10 and 15 submissions. I know that this does not necessarily mean that there were 25 submissions for these 8 pentads, but the assumption is that there could have been 25 cards submitted. In fact in the last two weeks we had 87 cards submitted. So in effect we are not only breaking new ground and increasing depth of coverage, but also targeting that depth fairly well.
In the last two weeks we have had 18 submissions which have contributed to the 'Cards-to-Green' effort. This has moved us from needing 2 361 cards, to 2 343. The only movement has been in the 3 and 4 cards needed categories, i.e. pentads that had no or only 1 card.
Looking at total submissions, we averaging 8.1 cards submitted per day. For the last two weeks we had a submission rate of 7.7 cards and 4.7 cards per day for the respective weeks. It would seem that the cold weather in the last week has really affected submissions. With the onset of spring we also experiencing higher species totals, with 56.1 and 50.3 spp/card in the last two weeks against 45.6 and 52.0 spp/card in the previous fortnight.

KZN Atlas Report 8-Jun-11 to 3-Aug-11

During these 56 days we have had 10 new pentads added to the KZN total. Leading the charge were John and Kim Cox who completed four of these, followed by Alan Manson who did three, and then Duncan McKenzie, Colin Gerrans and myself who did one each.

Moving to the 'Cards to Green' effort,I have not been keeping absolute track of who has been doing what, but the biggest movement has also been in the north east, and glancing through the lists, John & Kim Cox's names have been appearing very regularly.

At 8-Jun, KZN was short of 2 442 surveys to turn the entire province green on the coverage map. At 3-Aug we needed 56 cards less. Besides the 10 cards in new pentads, we also had 18 fewer pentads needing 3 cards. This is quite an achievement, because it means that we submitted 28 cards for pentads needing three cards. We now have 18 less, plus the ten that had no cover, i.e. for every pentad with no data that we submit a card for, we increase the number of pentads for which we need three cards.

For this reason we now have 8 more pentads which need two cards to turn green. We can pat ourselves on the back however, since we actually reduced the number of pentads that only need one card by three.

On average we have been submitting 1.4 cards per day that contribute towards the 'KZN Cards to Green' mini-project.

Just to put a geographic perspective for  which degree squares these 81 cards to green have been submitted [the Degree Square followed by cards]:

2832 14
2831 12
2930 12
2730  8
2931  8
2632  7 [Only counting those in KZN]
2929  6 [Only counting those in KZN]
2830  5
2732  4
2731  2 [Only counting those in KZN]
2829  2 [Only counting those in KZN]
3029  1 [Only counting those in KZN]

If one looks at the accompanying map, you can see the development of a contigously atlased block stretching north from Mtunzini north along the N2. This could quite easily rival the block along the N3 stretching north-west from the coast.

Thanks to all who have are participating in the project, lets keep up the good work.