In the next few days I am making a presentation on the value of Citizen / Community Science .
I would like to show a map of India which shows the "District / Country " boundaries and the “density” of observations. (and inversely show where activity is low). Administratively counties are divided into smaller blocks or sub-districts called tehsils or taluka’s but this level of boundaries is not yet available on iNat. So I may try and put the map onto another “sub-district” map henc
Are there any good ways to download a higher resolution map for India (or for a State within India)
i don’t understand what you’re asking for. are you looking for a high-res map of administrative boundaries? are you trying to make a choropleth that aggregates at the sub-district level? or are you just trying to display higher-resolution observation points on a map that has sub-district boundaries? or something else?
that doesn’t really clarify things. do you have an example / picture of what you’re looking for? how does a high resolution map differ from what iNaturalist currently provides you?
1.) Was asking if there is a way. If not will take a “screenshot” of the map that does show up.
2.) High resolution means I could overlay / underlay it on another existing “Subdistrict” map.
3.) The iNat Map does not conform to what the India Government considers to be it’s National Boundaries – this is a bit of a sensitive issue and is considered “treasonous” to use maps that show “incorrect” boundaries. Since I am making a public presentation such a map could be edited to conform (as I am not wanting to make a political statement or cause attention to be drawn away from the core of the issue)
When one zooms in one sees that the observations are not “coverin” a large area but are rather concentrated along a linear path(s) - which in reality are a path
i still don’t really understand what you’re looking for.
it sounds like you might be looking for a different basemap. so if iNat’s Google basemaps are problematic, then you could try OSM, and if OSM doesn’t work, then Esri, and so on… i would assume all the major map providers have similar boundaries. if so, then you might have to have to find a map from the Indian government or some other source that has your preferred boundaries.
so if the transparency is an issue, then you can make your own map and adjust the transparency:
if the size of the squares is the issue, then you can get finer points in various ways. the easiest is probably to use GBIF’s maps, though they will have only RG iNaturalist observations that are licensed for non-commercial or public domain:
Will explore the links - (explored) seems like I should be able to get what I want from there.
Thanks for the advice on what kind of base map to use. Am not a GIS person so will be asking a friend to help.
About GBIF – I would rather use iNat data (all observations) because again every observation is a valuable drop and the iNat data over rides licensing and “RG” status so it shows effort.