With Campus Lake, Thompson woods, and Touch of Nature, Southern Illinois University has a beautiful campus! The PEASE Lab has several ongoing campus and community efforts to document biodiversity across our campus. The PEASE Lab is the first US-based University to join the Campus Biodiveristy Network - an organization to collectively document and monitor across global university campuses. We additionally host the annual Saluki BioBlitz, which is a 24-hour challenge to document as many species as possible on campus. See details below!

The Campus Biodiversity Network is a global group of universities joining efforts to encourage documenting and monitoring biodiversity on campus. All efforts are documented on iNaturalist where universities can tally their species count and compare across the globe. Good news: SIU is currently 2nd across all competing universities with nearly 8,000 species documented on campus!

The Saluki BioBlitz is an annual 24-hour challenge to document biodiversity across SIU’s Carbondale campus. At a BioBlitz, students, faculty, staff, scientists, families, and the general public work together to get a snapshot of an area’s biodiversity. Using the iNaturalist platform, participants create digital records of which species are found (and not found!) on campus. The event is a great way to document and learn about the biodiversity across campus while contributing to the Pease Lab’s and SIU Forestry Program’s ongoing efforts of documenting biodiversity across the region.

The 2023 SIU Saluki BioBlitz was a great success!

View all observation details including the leaderboard on the iNaturalist 2023 SIU Saluki BioBlitz page!

A comparison of across all Saluki BioBlitz years can be found on the iNaturalist umbrella page page!