I’m wondering if there is a way to use data from iNat to figure out which areas have a particular volume of observations. There’s probably a better way to word what I’m asking for…
For example, I live close to Las, Vegas NV and there are millions of people living here and visiting every year. A lot of observations are made on a very regular basis at many of our parks and outdoor areas. I know scientists, students, and God knows who else use the data on iNat for important projects. It would be more beneficial for the iNat community to have observations from “less observed” places instead of getting daily updates from “Big City Park A” or “Bird Watching Area B.” Is there a way to overlay this kind of info onto a map, aside from the big world map of observations? Excuse my lack of tech speak, but maybe like a “green zone” area for places that are frequently observed, an “orange” zone for areas that haven’t been observed in a period of time (6 months?) and a “red” zone from an area that is rarely or never observed?
Just an idea. Hopefully this makes sense to somebody.
(A note that I moved this from Feature Request to General because I think it needs a little more brainstorming and detail to become something actionable.)
are you just talking about a reverse heat map? or are you actually thinking of partitioning the map into logical areas and places – more like a choropleth? how would you define “less observed”? (or looked at another way, how would you determine what to color green vs orange vs red?) and how would you use the information? (for example, suppose there’s a parking lot next to the beach. the parking lot itself might end up being a “less observed” area, and shoreline might show up as a more observed area. but does that mean people should try to observe more in the parking lot?)
As @brian_d says, the easy way is to use the map view in the Explore view. When I do that for Nevada, I can see that there’s a big area northwest of :as Vegas where there are hardly any observations, for example.
The harder way would be to download observations with their coordinates and load those into a GIS map. Then lay a grid of whatever size over that and total up the number of observations in each cell. Obscured observations will screw this up, but you can either not use obscured observations or assume that the obscured observations are a small enough subset of the total observations and that they are randomly spread throughout your area of interest that they won’t skew the results enough to matter (those assumptions may be true for an entire state, but I suspect they’d become more of a problem in smaller areas). Once you’ve done all that, it would be easy to symbolize each cell by whatever system you prefer.
that said, i think iNat’s heatmap implementation results in a visualization that can be misleading and not super useful at times. for example, here’s all observations over Houston:
(in this second screenshot, you have a much better idea of where there are larger populations of wealthier Houstonians – and also where there are more iNat observations.)
that second screenshot provides a view of the data that’s similar to what you could get from the Explore page, but the Explore page switches to pins at a certain zoom level, and even if you make your own custom map, the grid tile layer also starts to suffer from some of the issues that heatmap does at more granular zoom levels, too. but it’s probably more useful than the heatmap view for this particular use case:
I make my own heatmaps in ArcGIS with the observations in my conservation area, and can display those as I like, but I do so offline and via downloading the observation data. I have neither need or desire to go through the API process to try to get the the entre iNat observation set to display online the way I want over minor preference for a slightly different display type.
I would certainly use such a tool. I always figure highly populated areas get seen most so I avoid New York, Ontario, California, etc. while identifying and type in lesser populated areas to my filter to sort of cover more ground.
If all else fails just look at population figures on wiki. It’s not always perfect, as some areas like Nova Scotia have a huge amount of uploads per capita, and often compare to the volumes of much bigger, more populous areas like Quebec. But you’ll notice the exceptions as you go.
All I have to do on my smart phone is go to Explore which is the left most option next to activity, observe, and me to see where observations have been made.I can see that a large number have been made at a local park a half mile away and more at another park near there and some at people’s homes. I don’t know any way to choose where people observe other than INaturalist articles addressing finding new spots to observe with the general user.
