Developing an ecological visualization system for biodiversity data

Abstract

Data visualisation is essential for communicating and interpreting biodiversity data effectively. When compared to numerical values, visualising information with images is easier. Citizen Science has facilitated the collection of biodiversity data that can be used to conserve and preserve biodiversity sites. Google Earth provides a visualisation platform that can be used for biodiversity site monitoring. The latter has frequently been expressed in terms of biodiversity indices. The use of biodiversity indices for sites can be improved by incorporating visualisation elements. Previous studies that attempted to incorporate the calculation of biodiversity indices into biodiversity monitoring systems lacked the visualisation feature. This novel study aims to create an online module that combines biodiversity data from citizen science with a visualisation component. The observation data is imported from iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/) using the REST API method, which includes the species name and location. Species richness, Shannon-Wiener index, and Simpson index, as well as Hill Numbers, are automatically calculated and displayed on the Google Map alongside the green space area. The University of Malaya, which is located in an urban area, will be used as the study site for the demonstration of the developed prototype. The online biodiversity module prototype is available at http://www.umlivinglabsystem.com/Map/multipoly.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• conservation biology
• citizen science
• visualization
• web-based system
• biodiversity indices