i assume you’re talking about having some mechanism for users to specify their own map layers to be visualized in iNat maps, not specifically adding an ecoregion layer to iNat maps.
personally, i think ecoregions are niche, and here’s why:
- although i’m not denying that it’s nice to be able to visualize organism distributions in the context of habitat in a few situations, most users in iNaturalist aren’t going to ever do this, even if they could do so easily within the system
- there are lots of ways to visualize habitat, and ecoregions are only one of them. some folks might like to use Ecoregions, but some folks might prefer some other type of visualization.
if other folks really want to see observation distributions in greater context, there are already ways to do this. as i’ve mentioned before, just about anyone who has a device with internet access can visualize iNat observations over whatever other map layers they like relatively easily and quickly.
i’ve also mentioned above that things like EPA ecoregions seem like sort of a dated concept to me. you almost need a manual to decipher exactly what each ecoregion means. i would much rather see the kind of visualization shown below, complete with waterways. i can view this without any keys and still get a good idea of what’s going on:
compare that to something like this, in which the orange polygon tells me nothing about what could be included in its boundaries unless i know in advance what that polygon is supposed to represent:
…
if you want to visualize against ecoregions specifically, it’s pretty easy to do this in ArcGIS Online. you don’t even need an account, although you can get one for free.
