Use Our Technology

Plants of Concern is a community science rare plant monitoring project in Illinois, USA. Community scientists monitor threatened, endangered, and regionally rare species at hundreds of natural areas each year to assess the health of rare plant populations. We share data with land managers, researchers, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Natural Heritage Database, and use data to advocate for natural areas.

The Plants of Concern web app and mobile app tools, plus our online volunteer training modules, are available for your organization to use for rare plant monitoring.

Tech Tools

Mobile App for Monitoring

The Plants of Concern mobile app allows users to view their monitoring assignments, navigate to plant population locations, and complete monitoring reports by entering the following data:

Plant counts
Plant reproductive rates
GPS coordinates (using smartphone GPS)
Native species associates
Invasive species abundance
Impacts to the population
Land management

Web App for Data Access

On our website, project coordinators and land managers can assign a person to monitor a rare species occurrence, as well as manage sites, species, and occurrence records.

A data download feature allows flexible download options, including PDF, Excel, CSV, and KML formats.

To ensure confidentiality, people can only view the species and location information for their assignments.

Online Training for Volunteers

We offer free online training to rare plant monitors that covers rare conservation topics & our monitoring protocol.

Training is self-paced, consists of six video modules & short quizzes, and takes 1-2 hours to complete.