Chicago Wildlife Watch Talk

Dynamic maps for dynamic processes

  • mason_UWI by mason_UWI scientist

    Static maps that illustrate where species are spatially distributed are useful, but they do not truly capture the fact that the observed richness in a habitat patch varies temporally.

    Static maps are, after all, static.

    Because species colonize new patches and go extinct in others, it would be better to have a map that actually accounts for this. While not very useful for publication, it's a pretty nifty way to show how species richness at our sites changes almost every season! Note that this map of species richness of mesocarnivores (coyote, raccoon, red fox, skunk, and opossum) is with our old data.

    Where do you see species richness stay the same over time?

    Where along the urban rural gradient do sites pop up with 5 species?

    Here is a link to a larger version of the map.

    enter image description here

    Posted

  • escholzia by escholzia

    Cool plot - thanks for sharing!

    A couple of minor comments (sorry, I know I shouldn't edit everything I see, but can't help it, it's my DNA) - colors 3 and 4 look about the same at this dot size, and one typo (predicited).

    Posted

  • mason_UWI by mason_UWI scientist

    Thanks for the comments!

    I totally would have missed out on 'predicited'

    Posted

  • mason_UWI by mason_UWI scientist

    Typo fixed and symbols changed for sites with 4 and 5 mesocarnivores!

    Link to larger version

    enter image description here

    Posted

  • zorglax by zorglax

    Cool map! Have you considered sharing it (and the source code) on r-bloggers.com? It's sure nice to look at.

    Posted

  • mason_UWI by mason_UWI scientist

    I have thought about it, but decided against it. The map generation was the easy part in R using ggmap and gridExtra. The gif generation I did in the console with imagemagick. Also, I could not really share the lat long coordinates of all our camera traps!

    Posted