Looking for iNaturalist observation map visualisation suggestions

General
14

because maps can be so variable, it would take a lot more code than i’m willing to do to create a proper front-end to allow people to really configure their own maps.

that said, the Leaflet-integrated version of the map does allow you to specify parameters in the URL that will filter down the results (just like you can in the iNaturalist Explore and Identify pages), and i just added the ability to pass in custom scale factors, too (which will allow you to customize scaling ranges).

for example, this gives you Rudbeckia amplexicaulis observations scaled from 0-5 observations per cell at 0 zoom, down to just 1 observation per cell at the highest zoom levels:
https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_UTFgrid_based_density_map_for_Leaflet.html?taxon_id=200073&scale_factor=5,4,3,2,2,1

or this will apply scaling for 0-5 observations per cell across all zoom levels:
https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_UTFgrid_based_density_map_for_Leaflet.html?taxon_id=200073&scale_factor=5

if you need advice on how to tinker with either of my examples, let me know what you’re trying to achieve.

they’re both just HTML files. so you can begin tinkering by doing the following:

  1. click on the Github code link of the example that you’re interested in
  2. just above the code on that page, there’s a Raw button. click that.
  3. select and copy all the text.
  4. open a code or plain text editor. (i just use Notepad in Windows.)
  5. paste the code into the code/text editor, and then save the file as an .html file.
  6. now find the newly saved file, and open it in your favorite internet browser just to make sure it’s working.
  7. if the browser opened up the file okay, you can go back to your code/text editor and start editing. when you’re ready to see changes. just save the changes, and then reload the page in your browser.

i’ve been thinking about a 3rd version of this that could take filter parameters in a URL and generate a static map that might scale automatically, automatically set the map extent, and provide the option to generate a proper heatmap, based on parameters entered, but i probably won’t get to that any time soon.

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