Privacy Policy

1. Scope and operator

This policy explains how Ecopoiesis Consulting LLC, a New Hampshire limited liability company (“Ecopoiesis,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), handles information through the TerraPatch iOS app and its home-screen widget (together, “TerraPatch”).

2. Patch location

If you tap Find my patch, TerraPatch asks Apple’s Core Location service for permission to obtain your location while the app is in use. The app requests approximately kilometer-level accuracy, but the coordinate supplied by the device may be more or less precise depending on device, signal, and system behavior.

TerraPatch saves the most recent coordinate in local app preferences. It uses the coordinate on-device to choose matching regional almanac material and calculate sunrise, sunset, day length, moon information, and other place-based context. TerraPatch does not continuously track the device or send the coordinate to Ecopoiesis.

If you decline location access, TerraPatch remains usable with its available default regional layer. You can change location permission in iOS Settings. Turning permission off prevents new location requests but does not by itself erase a coordinate already saved inside the app.

3. Widget information

To show local nature information without opening the app, TerraPatch writes a small snapshot into an Apple App Group shared only by the TerraPatch app and widget. The snapshot includes the saved coordinate, regional identifiers, generated almanac and sky text, the highlighted organism and habitat when applicable, year progress, and any locally recorded content-access identifiers. This information remains in the app group on the device and is not sent to Ecopoiesis.

4. Private field notes

Field notes are stored locally using SwiftData and may contain:

• the observation text and creation date and time;
• optional common and scientific species names;
• the regional place name and the saved latitude and longitude at the time the note is created;
• the related almanac entry or content-pack identifier; and
• an optional photograph.

TerraPatch does not upload field notes to Ecopoiesis. Because each note may preserve its coordinate, a collection of field notes can reveal a history of places where observations were recorded to anyone who gains access to the device or its backups.

5. Photographs and camera

You may choose an existing photograph through Apple’s photo picker or take a new photograph after granting camera permission. TerraPatch resizes when needed and re-encodes the visible image as a compressed JPEG before saving it with the local field note. This process is designed not to retain the source file’s embedded EXIF or GPS metadata. The note itself may still contain TerraPatch’s separately saved coordinate as described above.

Photographs can contain identifying or sensitive visual information even without metadata. Review the image before saving it and avoid recording people, private property, documents, or locations you do not want kept with the note.

6. Almanac, sky calculations, and external links

The current almanac content and sun and moon calculations operate from bundled material and on-device calculations. TerraPatch does not send your saved coordinate to an ecology-data API in the current version.

TerraPatch may link to land trusts, citizen-science projects, government agencies, or scientific sources. Those links open outside TerraPatch. The destination receives the ordinary information your browser sends to websites and applies its own privacy policy. TerraPatch does not automatically enroll you in or transmit your field notes to those programs.

7. Device backups

Depending on your Apple device and backup settings, iOS may include TerraPatch’s local app data, field notes, photos, preferences, or App Group information in an iCloud Backup or computer backup. Those backups are provided and controlled by Apple and by you; they are not a TerraPatch account or an Ecopoiesis server.

8. Retention, correction, and deletion

You may edit or delete individual field notes in the app. Deleting a note also deletes the photograph stored with that note from the active SwiftData store. TerraPatch does not currently provide a developer account from which Ecopoiesis can retrieve, correct, or delete local data for you.

Removing TerraPatch normally removes its private local container and widget data from the device, subject to Apple’s operating-system and backup behavior. Copies in an earlier device backup may remain until that backup is replaced or deleted. The current development build does not yet provide a single in-app control that erases all field notes, saved patch preferences, and widget information together.

9. What Ecopoiesis does not collect

TerraPatch does not send Ecopoiesis your field notes, photographs, saved coordinates, device identifiers, contact information, or app-usage analytics. It has no advertising SDK, cross-app tracking, personal-information sale, developer account, CloudKit sync, or developer-controlled user database.

10. Children and general audiences

TerraPatch is a general-audience educational app and is not designed to collect personal information from children. Parents and guardians should supervise a younger person’s use of location, camera, photographs, field notes, and external links.

11. Security

Local storage limits routine disclosure, but no electronic storage is completely secure. Protect the device with a passcode or biometric lock, keep iOS current, and be mindful that widgets can display information on the home screen.

12. Changes and contact

We may update this policy if TerraPatch’s features or data practices change. If a future version adds cloud sync, accounts, remote ecology APIs, analytics, or purchases, we will update the policy and app disclosures before releasing that handling.

Ecopoiesis Consulting LLC
PO Box 117
Nottingham, NH 03290
info@ecopoiesisconsulting.com

Please do not email private field notes, coordinates, or photographs unless they are essential to a support request.