Dataset of wildlife-vehicle collision (WVC) observations in California through April 2025, compiled from iNaturalist citizen science reports for use in Quantitative Methods for Spatial Analysis at California State University, Stanislaus.
The dataset contains over 33,000 records, with more than 22,000 concentrated in Santa Clara County and detailed observations along Alma Bridge Road near Lexington Reservoir. Records include species-level information, with Pacific newts representing 96.5% of reports, alongside additional taxa such as frogs, toads, and lizards. Temporal coverage spans January 2018 to April 2025, enabling analysis of annual variation, species abundance, and spatial clustering of roadkill events.
observed_on: Normalized date of observationtime_observed_at: Normalized datetime of observationquality_grade: Quality grade of this observation. See Help section for details on what this means. See https://help.inaturalist.org/support/solutions/articles/151000169936latitude: Publicly visible latitude from the observation locationlongitude: Publicly visible longitude from the observation locationpositional_accuracy: Coordinate precision (yeah, yeah, accuracy != precision, poor choice of names)private_latitude: Private latitude, set if observation private or obscuredprivate_longitude: Private longitude, set if observation private or obscuredpublic_positional_accuracy: Maximum horizontal positional uncertainty in meters; includes uncertainty added by coordinate obscurationscientific_name: Scientific name of the observed taxon according to iNaturalistcommon_name: Common or vernacular name of the observed taxon according to iNaturalist
For more information about column headers, see https://www.inaturalist.org/terminology
- August Frisk - Data Curration, Analysis, and Documentation
- iNaturalist Contributors - Data Collection, Identification, and Validation