I do like an interactive map and of course i can be obsessed with wildlife recording! Fortunately in my current role (or near enough) those things often coincide.

Most recently i have been working with the County Plant Recorder to help to create a data visualisation that could help to support recorders and the county flora effort. The result is the map below!

The map shows vascular plant observations since 2020. Individual records have been summarised to monad resolution using the QGIS TomBio Plugin which also totals the number of individual taxa and number of records. This gives us a layer of 1km grid squares with attributes containing the (OS) grid reference, number of records in that square and number of taxa recorded in that square (species or better).

The layer has then been styled and contextualised with ESRI’s ArcGIS Online. Importantly, we don’t just want to show the data but also help people prioritise squares and access areas where they can add new information. To do this we’ve added additional information;

• Biological Heritage Site (BHS) boundaries
• Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) boundaries
• National Trust Open Access Land
• Open Access Land
• Public Rights of Way in Lancashire (where available)

Hopefully these layers will help identify areas of potential good diversity (BHS and SSSI’s) and also where and how they might be legally accessed.

In addition i have added a blank 1km grid which is searchable from the map search function. This allows recorders to find particular squares or gain additional location information ‘on click’.

The map functions equally well on a desktop or mobile device with the latter having an advantage of allowing the user to geolocate themselves live in relation to boundaries on the map.