I’m creating some very simple heat maps from iNat’s Explore page for some current research. I start with the map of observations, but then to unclutter the image, I choose the “Map” layer instead of “Satellite”, and then go to Full Screen view (button to the left of the map). When I have the right zoom magnification for my purposes, I just do a screen capture. This gives me a clean map for a given taxon and area that I can then crop and annotate as desired. Copyright notices will be added in publication, etc. See the examples in these screen captures:
p.s. The latter annotations are added in Adobe Photoshop and Mac’s Preview apps.