Using ForageGB

The Patch Map is where you drop a pin to log where you found something. A few things worth knowing:

• Your pins are private to you. Nobody else can see your exact find locations.
• The community heatmap only ever shows a coarse, k-anonymised hexbin aggregation of activity — never anyone's exact location, and never a view that could be reverse-engineered to a single person's spot.
• Photos are EXIF-stripped on upload, removing embedded location and device metadata before they're stored.

This means you can log your best patches honestly, in detail, without worrying about giving away a precise spot — to the app, to other users, or to anyone who later sees a shared photo.

The Logbook is your own timeline of finds — a personal journal with photos and notes against each entry. It's owner-only: nobody else can see your logbook unless you choose to share an individual find elsewhere (for example, posting it to the Workbench).

From the Logbook you also get:

• Lifetime stats — totals by species and by family, so you can see what you're finding most and where the gaps in your experience are.
• Export — download your data as CSV, GPX, or JSON, useful for your own records, for sharing with a local recording scheme, or for backing up your data outside the app.

1. Post a find with clear photos covering the features described in Identifying fungi safely — cap, underside, stem base, habitat, and any notes on smell or spore print.
2. Optionally request the AI pre-screen for an advisory first suggestion to help kick off discussion — remember this is a hint, never a safety check.
3. Other foragers, including verified identifiers, propose identifications.
4. People vote on the proposals, and a consensus forms with an associated confidence level.
5. Read the discussion, not just the headline consensus — the reasoning and any disagreement in the comments is often the most useful part.

As you contribute accepted identifications and other helpful contributions on the Workbench, you build reputation. Higher reputation moves you up through trust tiers, which carry more weight in consensus voting and unlock visible badges on your profile. There's no separate application process described here — it's earned through consistent, accurate participation over time.

On the home screen, In season near you and Flushing now show aggregated, region-level seasonality for species near you, plus a rough rainfall/temperature-based "flush" signal suggesting when a flush of fruiting bodies is more likely. Two important caveats:

• It uses your fuzzed region, never your exact location.
• It's a guide, not a guarantee — local microclimate, specific habitat, and plain bad luck all mean the signal can be wrong in either direction. Use it to decide when it's worth heading out, not as a promise of what you'll find.

ForageGB can notify you in-app, by email, and via optional web push for:

• Responses to an identification you've posted on the Workbench.
• A consensus being reached on one of your finds.
• Flush alerts for species or regions you follow.

You can manage which channels you use from your account settings.