This week our assignment was to “create a data visualization on a postcard that shows a 'snapshot' of a particular slice of a public data set.”
I live by Prospect Park and run there a lot and since reading How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell I have become more curious about what kinds of plants and animals I can see at different times of years. I was also inspired by Tega Brain’s piece “Keeping Time” in which she visualized phenological patterns of Orchids over time. I was curious about what kinds of patterns I might see in Prospect Park on my runs. I used the iNaturalist dataset and downloaded all observations made in Prospect Park. I took the top 10 species observed by number of total observations and used these as my “data snapshot” for my post card. In the resulting visualization you can definitely see when springtime is in the park! I am planning to send it to either my friend who loves finding plants and animals in the city or the Prospect Park Alliance!
