This is my midterm project! Here is a link to the web map, but I also have embedded it into this page below.
Introduction
For this midterm project, I decided to look a the dataset of wolves and moose sightings in North America. I focused on the wolves and moose found spotted in 2020. Originally, I wanted to use this data to explore the changes in wolf and moose sightings throughout a period or two specific years. But, there was a lot more data than I expected. So, my web map explores the wolf and moose sightings in 2020 and the correlation between the species in their respective areas. I decided to look at how much wolves and moose in an area affect the population of both species. I was able to successfully look at and analyze this correlation through ArcGIS.
Sources
The dataset I used was the wolf and moose sightings in North America. There was a lot of data in the CSV file ranging from the 1980’s to 2023. The dataset comes from iNaturalist, who have already used ArcGIS to map the data of each moose and wolf. The data had many different columns ranging from the date observed, longitude and latitude positional accuracy, to coordinates obscured and common name. Since there was a lot of metadata, I got an error when putting the csv file into ArcGIS. Which was really surprising because this was after I filtered some of the columns out.
Process
When cleaning the data, I choose to delete the columns that I wouldn’t use and then go through and delete every row where the animal wasn’t observed in 2020. Looking back now, there could have been a lot more information I deleted because it wasn’t as useful as I thought it would be. I decided to clean my data on Google Sheets because it was the simplest way to do so. For my dataset, I included the columns that mentioned the date the animal was observed, the coordinates of the location, a link to a page about the animal, the image URL, the scientific name, the common name, and the date the website was created. Looking back I could have removed some of these columns because they were specific to each animal, but if that is what a user wants to observe when clicking on one of the dots, that information is still there. I also decided to keep the data that didn’t quite have the correct format for date. This is because the date wasn’t going to affect my web map and because I knew it was the correct year.
Presentation
I wanted to use a visualization tool that allowed a lot of interaction with the user. This is why I choose to visualize my data with ArcGIS. With ArcGIS, I was able to show the correlation between wolves and moose in a specific area. To differentiate the different types of moose and wolves, I decided to change the color of each common wolf and moose name. I also choose to label the variance within each species with different shades of green and purple. I wanted the overall presentation of the web map to be simple so the main focus would be on the data. So, I chose the charted territory map as my base map layer. I liked the simplicity of the map layer but also the color scheme. I used a map notes layer to add a border around North America to emphasize that North America is the main focus. The attribute I chose to focus on was the common name because they are more recognizable than the scientific names and it would be easier to count the total amount of moose and wolves.
Significance
Through this visualization, you can see the various areas the moose and wolves lie. You can also witness some relationships between moose and wolves in certain areas. In the northeastern part of the United States, there was a high moose population in 2020 but less than 10 wolves. In contrast, the eastern part of North America had a higher population of wolves (that were seen) during 2020 and a lower amount of moose spotted. The amount of moose was still high but not as dense as the area in the northeastern part. This data can also be compared to other locations within the North American map. But, this can also be compared to similar maps of different years. This can be used to see which types of wolves/moose are the most spotted and which areas are densely populated with specific species.
Because I wasn’t able to include all the data from the dataset because some of the formatting issues, I may have deleted a few rows without realizing it, so I may not have an accurate representation of all the wolves and moose spotted in North America. The interactive and visualization aspect of this web map relates to the digital arts. Being able to interact with this web map specially and visually influences the overall knowledge about the content. It raises questions and comments that probably wouldn’t be thought of during different ways of presentation.
