Why aren't some observations appearing on the map?

There are a few reasons an observation might not appear on a map. For example, casual grade observations do not appear on maps by default, and some observations may not appear in Place or Project searches, depending on their location, geoprivacy setting, or if the community has voted the location is not accurate in the Data Quality Assessment.

But if you're certain that the observation should appear in your search results and you're not seeing it on a map, the most likely cause is that its location accuracy radius is too large to be considered "mappable" on iNaturalist. Basically, iNaturalist won't show an observation on a map if its location is very inaccurate.

We use the "distance of a diagonal from corner to corner across the uncertainty cell for the given coordinates" to calculate this, and on iNaturalist "uncertainty cell" means 0.2 x 0.2 degrees. Because we use degrees, the actual radius size gets smaller as one goes north or south from the equator. Here are some examples of how big an observation's location radius can be at a given latitude and still be considered "mappable":

• 0° (equator): ~31.5 km
• 45° north or south: ~27.3 km
• 80° north or south: ~22.6km

On the iNaturalist website, any observation's accuracy radius can be found by going to the observation's page and clicking on "Details" under the map.