What habitat is that? Proof of concept

I recently posted about a plan to use David Keith's work in "Ocean Shores to Desert Dunes" to attach habitat types to the sites visited by the WednesdayWalkers (WW).  I found this to be a rather obsessive task and it distracted me more than somewhat from entering WW data to the database.  However I have

  1. entered up the indicative species for the 13 habitat types which appear to cover the area of activity of the WWs;
  2. found a way of selecting (in most cases) the main habitat type; and 
  3. plotted this on Google Earth 
Pink dots are grassy woodland, Light blue are wet sclerophyll forest, Purple are dry sclerophyll, Yellow are heaths and Green are grasslands.  The various different sizes are different subtypes of the habitat (eg distinguishing (sort of) "Tablelands clay grassy woodlands" from "Southern Tablelands grassy woodlands".)

From a very quick 'eyeball' the map above looks reasonably sensible and thus I will conclude that the process broadly works.

Obviously one job for the future is working out a way of presenting the maps more systematically, but thanks to the array of icons available on Earth Point that just requires some more careful thought rather than inventing cold fusion.

There are a range of other jobs available to fill up any spare moments.  The first of these is completing the data entry task so that a repeat analysis looks at the full range of data.  Other jobs include:
  • how to deal with sites where two or more habitat types get the same high score;
  • what to do about sites with very few species (eg a quick roadside stop on the way to somewhere else);
  • do species that are listed as indicative of many types (in this area) add value to the analysis?
(As a bit more detail on the last point 201 species in my list match the indicative species listed by Keith for one or more habitat types.  112 of these only link to one habitat type but the remaining 89 species link to a greter number with the most extreme case being Acacia dealbata which is an indicator for 7 habitat types  - of the 13 covered by the analysis.)

So I think the process will go on hold for a few weeks while I enter data.

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