Placekeeping — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Placekeeping?
Placekeeping is a public map and record of specific places and the care given to them over time. You add a spot, record what you see there, and return to record how it changes.
What is a spot?
A spot is a place small enough to stand in and tend: a garden bed, a wild corner, a single old tree, a monument. It is smaller than a whole property, and it is somewhere you can meet up close, from the inside.
How does a spot relate to a property?
A spot belongs to a tax parcel, the legal unit of land. One or more parcels make up a site, which is the familiar idea of a property. (A property may have acquired several parcels over the years, and these often stay separate in the tax records.) So one site can hold several spots, and each spot may have its own steward.
Who is a steward?
A steward is whoever tends a spot on the ground. Sometimes one person. Sometimes a garden club, a scout troop, a municipal crew, a neighborhood’s volunteers. On private land the steward is usually the owner. On public land it is usually someone other than the owner, whoever has taken the place on.
Stewardship is not the same as ownership, and it is not the same as observing. Anyone can add an observation to a spot, recording what the place is doing on the day they visit. Stewardship is the ongoing care behind those visits: the invasive pulled before it spread, the young tree kept clear, the litter carried out. Much of it is quiet, and much of it goes unrecorded anywhere. Placekeeping is where a spot’s steward is named alongside the care itself.
Can I add a spot on land I don’t own?
Yes. Most spots are on land the person recording them doesn’t own: a park, a preserve, a roadside, a public trail. Owning the land was never the point. What matters is that you can reach the spot and meet it up close.
Adding a spot doesn’t grant access to anywhere. On private land, the spot still needs to be yours, or somewhere you have the owner’s permission to be.
Is my name shown?
You choose. Placekeeping supports usernames and pseudonyms, so you can contribute under a name that isn’t your own.
Does adding a spot commit me to anything?
No. Adding a spot or an observation records what you saw. It is not a contract or a duty. You decide how much you do and for how long.
How often should I record?
As often as you like. There is no required schedule. Coming back matters, because a single visit is one sample and a season of readings tells the real story, but the pace is yours.
What happens if a spot’s steward stops?
The record stays. Another steward can take the place on. Stewardship can lapse and pass to someone else over the years, and the record holds through the change.
Do I need to know plant names?
No. You record the layer you can see and judge. If you use a plant-identification app, treat its answer as a suggestion, not the final word. It can be confidently wrong, especially before flowers open or after they fade. Built-in integration with plant-identification apps is something we are considering.
What if I record something wrong?
One visit is a single sample, and the run of readings over a season is the honest picture. If you are not sure about a field, leave it blank. Blank reads as “not assessed,” not as a claim.
Do I have to fill in every field?
No. Record what you can. A partial observation is still useful, and an honest blank is better than a guess.
What happens to the photos I upload?
Every photo is resized and stripped of its embedded data before it is stored. That embedded data, called EXIF, is information your phone tucks inside the file: GPS coordinates, the camera model, and the exact time the shot was taken. We remove it. The photo other people see carries none of it.
The spot itself is shown on the map. That is the point of Placekeeping. What we strip is the hidden data inside the photo file, which can pin a location more precisely than the map does, or point to a different place entirely if the photo was taken somewhere else.
What should I not take or share photos of?
Generally, people’s faces or private homes.
How is this different from apps I already use?
Apps like iNaturalist record an organism or a specimen. Placekeeping records a place and the care given to it over time, and names the steward who tends it.
How do I tell a property owner about invasive weeds on their land?
Today, in New York State, there is no formal channel for this. Notifying a landowner about invasive vegetation on their property is left to informal, person-to-person outreach — a note, a knock on the door, a shared observation.
A proposal called Invasive Vegetation Control would give this a real process. We support it, and we’ll update this answer if it advances.
Is it free?
Yes.
I can sign in with Google, but not Apple?
Apple support is coming soon.
Do you have a mobile version?
The current mobile version can’t extract locations from photos. An updated mobile version is coming in October 2026.