Super Users
Super-User:
Top 1% of U.S. users by number of observations (2014 - 2020)
The average U.S. super-user submitted over 1,000 observations per year between 2014 and 2020. This was, on average, 97 times that of the casual user representing the remaining 99% of users. 2017 and 2018 appear to be breakout years for participation among super-users as well as casual users, with average annual observations above 2,000 and 20, respectively.
Super-users have been a consistent driving force behind the total number of observations in a given year. Their portion of total observations has ranged from 46% to 52% between 2014 and 2020.
Top Super-Users
To give an impression of how prolific super users can be, we highlighted the top users by two different metrics: total observations and mean distance from the centroid of one's U.S. observations. The latter gauges how far and wide the user travelled to make observations. Maps below show the user's non-U.S. observations, but measurements of distance were made only for U.S. observations.
Frequency
Observations by "finatic"
2014: 6,223
2015: 9,269
Observations by "sambiology"
2016: 8,200
Observations by "ck2az"
2017: 31,413
2018: 42,108
2019: 28,790
2020: 15,054
Mean Distance from Own Centroid
In 2014 and 2015, user "colinmorita" - then a high schooler - recorded observations furthest around the world. The mean distance between his observations and their geographic centroid was 1,477 miles and 1,466 miles for each year, respectively.
Observations by "belyykit"
2016: 1,944 miles
Observations by "calopteryx"
2017: 1,998 miles
Observations by "pinus_taeda"
2018: 1,984 miles
Observations by "davidr"
2019: 2,020 miles
Observations by "dannynelson94"
2020: 1,711 miles