An exploratory visualization tool for mapping the relationships between animal movement and the environment

Abstract

Movement ecologists and environmental scientists are increasingly utilizing large volumes of spatiotemporal data collected from animal tracking and remote sensing of the environment to explore the environmental drivers of animal movements and long distance migrations. For scientists, the visual exploration and mapping of animal tracks in space and time and in relation to their environment is key to the generation of new hypotheses and investigation of dependencies. Effective visualization of such multidimensional data is a time consuming and challenging process. Creating professional, interactive, and fluid looking animations for public outreach and presentation purposes is similarly arduous. We present a new exploratory visualization tool for the analysis of animal movement datasets enriched with environmental variables and other miscellaneous data. This interactive visualization tool is designed to be effective and intuitive for users from biology and ecology disciplines, who are rather unfamiliar with GIS and mapping software. The tool is able to illustrate how environmental factors influence movement patterns of animals by offering to the user a variety of visual variables that can be combined in novel ways. We demonstrate the capabilities of this new visualization tool by analyzing the movement data of nine Galapagos Albatrosses and one Turkey Vulture migration track.