Can you check if it works now? I think there was a minor glitch with my web host.
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@keirmorse For any of the graphs, when you click on one of the items in the legend, it will show/hide that item in the chart.
I updated the graphs. This is the revised danger zone. The lines are color coded by species. When you click on an item in the legend, it will show/hide that annotation value for all the species
To show the Flowers annotations for all four species, I clicked on other four annotations in the legend to hide them.
I also added a menu to show observations counts or percents. Here’s the Flowers annotation for all four species with percent.
The graphs for annotations includes “not annotated”. Should “not annotated” be shown or hidden by default? iNaturalist taxa pages shows “no annotation” by default.
Very nice! After “Flowers and Fruits” in the legend, it might be good to add something like “Click categories to add or remove” as that isn’t currently intuitive. There are lots of other things that could be nice to add or refine but its pretty awesome to now be able to easily compare the phenology of data of multiple species in iNat. This feature might be good to make a separate post about as other people would likely want to easily compare phenology between species and may not see it here.
It’s also nice that subspecies and varieties can be shown. In the below example, we can see three varieties of Malacothamnus jonesii with Malacothamnus discombobulatus. Note that both Malacothamnus jonesii var. jonesii and Malacothamnus discombobulatus grow together and they both have very distinct flowering periods that do not overlap, which prevents hybridization. The other varieties of Malacothamnus jonesii do not occur with other species and have longer flowering periods that do overlap the Malacothamnus discombobulatus flowering time. Whether this is just chance, evolution, or a need for more sampling, I don’t know, but it is interesting.
Regarding whether “not annotated” should be shown by default of not, when it is just one species, it’s nice to see everything. When it is multiple species, one or two categories are much better, so maybe good not to choose just one to turn off. Being able to see what is not annotated is very useful. For example, using just counts, I can see that Ribes roezlii may be underannotated relative to the others.Using percents, maybe it isn’t so bad. And looking at just Ribes roezlii, I can see that what is annotated vs. not looks like a reasonable distribution. Though, in this case, I think there might be a geographic bias that can’t be seen. If you want to complicate it further, it may be useful to compare the same species in two locations.
It does work now! Great. Thanks!
Edit, as I can’t post three comments in a row;
The pagination has one option with three dots (…)
I don’t get any results when I click it.
Screenshots:
I now sometimes run into the effect that the browser address field disappears. This remains if I jump to iNat
The difference could probably make if I start the explorer using a favorite from the homescreen rather then with a favorite inside safari.
Same setting while browsing through media with configuration of 196 per page
I noticed that there is an option to group by place but I can’t select it in this example, which is something I’ve played around with in exports. This would be a great way to compare flower phenology by place. Phenology could change due to climate (north vs. south, elevation, coastal vs not) but it could also indicate evolutionary phenological divergence.
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Next on my todo list is to add more geospatial analysis features to the map and graph tabs. I wanted to work on map and graphs together so that map and graph place-based data visualizations would complement each other.
Did you know about the differences and similarities in flowering periods for the various Malacothamnus varieties before looking at the graphs?
I enjoy making data exploration tools to allow people to see patterns in data without knowing how to code or knowing GIS software.
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I didn’t add any code that intentionally alters how iOS treats the browser address field. Whatever changes are happening to browser address field is caused by iOS and Safari.
Thx. I meanwhile got used to it and use this as a feature to get rid off superfluous browser elements.
Yep, I did my PhD on the genus, but I had to do all that comparing the different iNat pages and combining the data from exports, which is a lot more work. This tool really allows for much easier comparisons, exploration of the data, and hypothesis testing, which could really help people find interesting research questions to focus on.
New features
Group graphs by place
- For the graphs, add the ability group annotations by place. Here’s a comparison of ‘Flower and Fruits’ annotations for Narrowleaf Milkweed and Tropical Milkweed in Los Angeles and San Diego.
Animated maps
- Add the ability to view animated maps. Animated maps shows a series of maps for selected time periods so that people can view changes over time. Here’s an animated map for monarch observations in Los Angeles for months.
- Select ‘Month’, ‘Year’, or ‘Month and Year’
- Select the number of seconds to show each map. Default value is 5 seconds.
- Click the ‘Play’ button to start the animation.
- Click the ‘Pause’ button to pause the animation.
Photo-only view
- Allow people to turn on/off every field in the grid and media view. This will be helpful for people who just want to view the photos/audio in the media view without any extra text. Thanks to @pfau_tarleton for the suggestion.
- click to Settings
- scroll down to ‘Fields Displayed’
- click the checkbox for the fields you want to see
Demo video
- I uploaded to YouTube a 13 minute demo about how to use the site. I was talking slowly because I was sleepy while making the video. You can speed up the video to shorten the duration.
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@keirmorse I would like your feedback about the group graphs by places and animated maps. I’m hoping these two place-based data visualizations complement each other.
Getting the app to remember the selected map layers when new maps load for the animation was a lot harder than I expected.
Great additions! The grouping by place is really cool! I do run out of colors if I go crazy though. Here’s a comparison of Ribes menziesii flowering in several adjacent California counties.
The two southern counties are earlier, which maybe makes sense for one taxon, however, two middle counties are later than five more northern ones. There are multiple described varieties in this region, so this shows phenological evidence that some should be possibly be recognized, or that there is some other reason for the phenological delay in two counties.
Compare that to the same area with the species Ribes californicum, which has a much more consistent phenological pattern.
I found the animated map worked well will one species. California poppy is a good example. Ribes menziesii didn’t really show much. Multiple species makes the animation a bit chunky but, overall, I think it has interesting potential for examining patterns within and between species.
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I’m trying to use color schemes that are colorblind friendly to make the site accessible for all people. The colorblind color schemes I’ve found have a limited number of colors. I’m not sure how to handle cases when people search for over 6 items.
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how about dashed and dotted versions? or something along those lines
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For the annotations and group by places / species charts (which is what Keir is using in his examples), I’m using dashed lines for the annotation values and color for the places/species.
If it is an option, when the color palette runs out, it could shift to wider or narrower lines. That said, how often are people comparing that many places? Though it is cool to have that option. If interesting patterns emerge, the set can be reduced if someone needs to determine which location(s) are standing out or refine the locations. Plenty of room to get wilder though. The graph below adds in more northern CA counties. Of course those peaks might not be as distinct as they seem as the graph bins by month rather than show when within each month. It’s a great starting place to explore the data though and see what is worth looking further into.
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Copying a post from Map showing spread of spotted lanternfly in the US. 2016-2024 thread which is closed. The animated maps and graphs on iNat Explorer can also be used to look at the spread of invasive species.
@common_snowball @paul_dennehy Here’s an animated map that shows the spread of spotted lanternfly by year since 2016 in the US and Canada. Press play button to start/pause the animation.
Here’s a graph of the same data.
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