Quantifying coastal habitat utilization with smartphones! Understanding and managing dynamic coastal landscapes for beach-dependent species requires biological and geological data across the range of relevant environments and habitats. It is difficult to acquire such data; many data collections focus on either the biology or the geology, are collected by non-specialists, and lack observational uniformity. iPlover is an app that addresses these difficulties, and simplifies and facilitates consistent data collection, management, and enables direct data input into research models of habitat utilization. iPlover was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center and the USGS Center for Integrated Data Analytics. It is used by trained and vetted personnel to record information about habitats on coastal beaches and the environment surrounding them. iPlover uses the sensors on the smartphone to simplify and facilitate consistent data collection and data management. iPlover supports a long-established network of partners working to address ongoing impacts on plover populations, such as habitat gain or loss due to storms.
