I found that importing the squirrel data and formatting it into ARCgis was a surprisingly easy process, and chose to keep displaying the data on squirrel color that was used as an example in class. Searching the collections of map overlays contained in the ARCgis system to find something that could give significant information in terms of relationship to the squirrels of central park was a much more difficult task.
In the end, I settled on using an overlay that displays the significant ecosystems, plants, and wildlife in the Hudson River area. Since neither Central Park nor squirrels are considered “significant” in the overlay, I believe the map I created raises questions about what counts as “significant wildlife”, since the people organizing the squirrel census view squirrels as significant enough to do an intensive study and data collection on, while the people collecting data on the larger Hudson River area do not.
WordPress is being finicky about letting me embed my map, so the link is below.
https://carleton.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Minimalist/index.html?appid=5078ff61616440e8b5aa05dd287cca17
One reply on “Squirrels and Significant Ecosystems”
I also feel like ARCGIS was surprisingly easy to use for this purpose. The map you created confused me quite a bit. You said that you mapped both significant ecosystems in addition to the squirrels data. Since the map for significant ecosystems is much much larger, I can’t really find where you squirrels data is. I think the workaround might be adding tags to zoom levels in ARCGIS so viewers can easily find the location at the right zoom level.