Alaska Natural Heritage Program's AKEPIC Data Portal
The Project
The Alaska Exotic Plants Information Clearinghouse (AKEPIC) is a database and mapping application showing the distribution of non-native plant species in Alaska and neighboring Canadian territories.
Challenges
There are millions of occurrences of non-native species in Alaska, with many non-native species occurring in each area. However, data are limited to areas where sampling has occurred, and many locations have not been sampled.
Solutions
Axiom used the AKEPIC database to generate a customized mapping application. The application shows all of the database locations to reveal sampling effort, and locations are colored by the number of occurrences. At further out zoom levels, we use hex-binning to show statistical overviews. Users can download all the data available for an area, or all the species information for all areas.
Highlights
Visualizing multiple types of occurrences (e.g., non-native plants present or absent)
Data reporting based on regions of interest
Low zooms show statistical overviews, high zooms show individual sampling transects
