Mar 30, 2011 16:41 GMT  ·  By

Project Noah, an award-winning application that helps nature lovers discover local wildlife, is being promoted by Apple via Twitter. Aspiring citizen scientists are just as encouraged to download the app and contribute to current research projects.

In a tweet fired away just minutes ago, Apple says “You can use Project Noah to identify plants and animals with your iPhone”.

As usual, the company links to the App Store page where the app in question is thoroughly described, complete with screenshots, system requirements, supported languages etc.

Noah’s name stems from Networked Organisms and Habitats, a project mostly intended as a tool that anyone can use to document and learn about their natural surroundings, but also as a technology platform that can be used by research groups to harness the power of amateur scientists.

Think of Project Noah as a dedicated branch of Wikipedia which focuses solely on nature and lets you upload your own comments and photos for everyone to use as reference, or add relevant information to.

The app has 3 modes:

· Spottings, which lets you take photographs of plants and animals, select the appropriate category, confirm your location, add tags, and submit them to either let people know what you’ve stumbled upon, or have them tell you what it is you’ve found.

· Location-based Field Guide, which allows users to see what kinds of plants and animals have been spotted around them. Options to search through a map view, list view, or grid view of the most recent spottings are there, all based on the user’s location.

· Field Missions, an option that allows you to become part of ongoing research projects, such as photographing squirrels, or mushrooms, or tracking migrating birds.

“Our ultimate goal is to build the platform for documenting all the world's organisms and through doing this we hope to develop an effective way to measure Mother Nature's pulse,” says Networked Organisms.

“By encouraging the mobile masses to document their encounters with nature, we hope to build a powerful force for data collection and an important educational tool for wildlife awareness and preservation. We hope you'll support us by joining Project Noah today,” Networked Organisms concludes.

Download Project Noah for iOS (Free)