Using a census of the squirrels in New York City’s Central Park was certainly an interesting exercise. I chose to supplement this census with some information about the geographical features of the area; more specifically the tree coverage. I noticed that there were groupings of the locations of squirrels in the data that was generally unexplained by the geographical data provided by the basemap. Some patterns could be discerned by the presence of a body of water, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Adding a layer that depicted the tree coverage – indicative of the habitat that squirrels like as well as overall what areas with vegetation and not pavement – provided that additional context needed.
https://carleton.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=7df6a853d6524023976e5991ec64d9a7
One reply on “Squirrel Census: What Do You Do With It?”
I like how you did additional analysis in additional to the assignment that was given to us. I really like the observation you had, which is that tree coverage does not match with the population density of squirrels. We need to keep in mind that the people who collect the data are just random citizens who did not conduct the process in a scientific manner. So, some squirrels maybe counted multiple times. Their population density also changes overtime – tree coverage and squirrel data might be collected at different times.