Fantastic!
This is also the best tool I’ve found for a feature which somehow gets obscured/washed out in the general iNat maps (maybe through ‘obscured’ locations?), which is, what are the most visited trails, and where are the “locals” spots to visit when you’re from out of town and want to get a more “authentic” experience from an iNatter’s POV, as well as a local just looking for hidden or little-visited corners.
In my area, it’s no surprise that the basic tourist spots (Pt. Lobos, Monterey Coast/Pebble Beach are heavily visited, but I was surprised to see how popular Toro Park was with out-of-towners! Maybe this is event-driven (races, etc.), or maybe it somehow has just become more popular than Fort Ord, but it was surprising to see nonetheless!
Alternatively, this is also a great tool to ID over-touristy areas to avoid, as well as possibly by land use-managers for identifying areas where trespassing is taking place!
On some of the above points @loganw, I’m not sure if it’s been discussed already, but are “obscured” locations excluded from these visualizations?
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I’m curious about this as well. A way to include/exclude them would help.
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It only include observations with “accurate” coordinates (uncertainty < 1km), though there are always some data entry outliers where that value might not be set correctly.
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This very orange spot is a school with a lot of international students, and has had a few bioblitzes involving students on campus.
Nothing special, just thought it was neat!
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I had a question. I zoomed in quite a bit and I could see purple dots and orange dots. But I also saw grey dot. What does that represent? Here’s a screenshot. The purple ones are my observations, but the grey one, (highlighted in red), is from a observer who has just 2 observations.
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Great question. Those are observations by users who don’t have enough observing history on iNat anywhere to decide if they are a “local” or a “tourist” in that spot. In the stats charts, they will also show up as gray.
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I am visiting family in Iceland at the moment, and decided to check out Iceland. The obvious orange dots totally swamp the smaller purple dots visible when I zoom in. Some of the tourists, will be Icelanders but most are probably foreigners.
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I figured it would be very slow. The map is pretty slow as is!
Strava heat maps is also useful for identifying where people are going that they shouldn’t be ;)
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Wondered how my county looked… everyone loves our “Gold Coast” as expected. Looks like acres of National Forest are under utilized …
And as I suspected I am the local purple blob!
Fun! Thanks!
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What a great idea! I love the visualization on the maps. I live in the cloud forest of Ecuador, in an eco-tourist town. And so tons o’ tourists, plus active locals. Way to go!
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