ABU DHABI // Members of the public are being asked to help document the country’s plants and animals using a new smartphone app.

The Environment Agency — Abu Dhabi’s apps ‘Collector for ArcGIS’, lets users take pictures of any flora and fauna they find, and upload them to a database.

Khansa Al Blouki, a manager at the EAD said: “With this initiative, we aim to increase public particiption and engagement in preserving our natural heritage. By downloading the app, which is available on smartphones for free, including iPhone or Android, the public can take pictures of animals and plants which then get translated into a graphic representation on a map using GIS. This data is then fed into a centralised database that gets updated in real-time.

“We are glad to invite the general public, wherever they live or travel in Abu Dhabi, to use this application to report on plants or animals that they may spot, especially if they look unusual to them. They don’t have to know what they are called, all they need to do is to send a photo and our experts can identify them, they might even come across a species that is new to science,” Mr Al Blouki said.

newsdesk@thenational.ae​