Kherlenchimeg Nyamsuren

Societal Impact Statement: Citizen science – collaboration between scientists and the public – has the potential to advance biodiversity monitoring. Using a case study from Mongolia, called the Flora of Mongolia project in iNaturalist, we illustrate how crowd‐sourced biodiversity data fills gaps of plant diversity in Mongolia. Over 52,200 observations covering 2,241 species of vascular plants (ca. 3,050 species) were observed by 665 participants between 2019 and 2023, showcasing the vast potential for rapid biodiversity inventories. This case study, from an under‐resourced region, illustrates the potential role of citizen science, and iNaturalist, in future biodiversity monitoring efforts. Summary: At a time of alarming biodiversity loss, biodiversity monitoring is crucial. Yet, funding for such monitoring is difficult to attain, leading to data gaps of baseline biodiversity information in regions of the world that are often the most threatened. In Mongolia, there are limited resources for finding wild photos and distribution points of vascular plant species. Therefore, we established the Flora of Mongolia project in iNaturalist in January 2019 to fill the gap of quantifying the country's plant diversity. Over the course of five years, 665 participants have contributed 52,286 observations belonging to 2,241 species. To date, participants have already observed 69% of the estimated total vascular plant species (ca. 3,050 species) in Mongolia including numerous threatened and endemic species. The total number of observations in iNaturalist is now higher than both herbarium records from GBIF and FloraGREIF for Mongolia, showcasing the potential of crowd‐sourcing data. The majority of species and observation numbers were observed in the western and central parts of Mongolia. This iNaturalist project is significantly expanding the capacity for data collection and analysis of vascular plants, highlighting the important role that customized iNaturalist projects can have in biodiversity data generation. As citizen science data collections continue to grow, we can expect them to play a significant role in further improving our knowledge of plant diversity, monitoring invasive species, and quantifying the impacts of climate change on rare and threatened plants.

In this study, we updated and revised the checklist of macrofungi, along with the distribution of phytogeographical regions and the regional conservation status in Mongolia. The checklist comprises 677 macrofungal species belonging to 284 genera and 119 families in the country. Based on previous studies, 18 species are currently invasive to Mongolia. In this checklist, only four species are endemic to Mongolia. Among the 677 species, the regional conservation status of 51 species was previously assessed as threatened in the country. Furthermore, we collected all available occurrence records from various sources. A total of 4733 occurrences of 655 species across Mongolia were analyzed for species richness based on a 0.5 degrees x 0.5 degrees grid cell size. We found the records to be unevenly distributed across Mongolia, where records from the northern and central parts dominate. Among these, we identified 43 grids with a high diversity of macrofungal species. Most of these grids did not reside inside by protected geographical areas.