North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission

Technical Report 15

Table of Contents

Interactive Mapping and Dynamic Data Visualization—Eye Candy or Useful Tool for Fisheries Research?

Authors:
Dion Oxman and Sabrina Larsen

Abstract Excerpt:
As researchers, we are constantly reminded that the scientific method begins and ends in observation. The ability to examine information to develop testable hypotheses can become problematic when dealing with large amounts of evolving data that have been collected from diverse locations and numerous organizations over extended periods of time. The addition of potential environmental and biological correlates only complicates the issue. This is especially true for salmon. For example, the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC) has over 60 years of disk and archival tag recovery data from salmon and steelhead collected on the high seas of the North Pacific. As of 2018, this dataset contains information from over 18,000 tag releases and recoveries. Similarly, temporal and spatial data associated with decades of coded-wire tag and marked otolith recoveries from salmon fisheries exist throughout the Pacific Rim. How can all this information be combined with variables such as sea surface temperature, current regimes, and chlorophyll concentrations within a temporal context over broad geographic scales in a way that helps to formulate questions, develop hypotheses, and address management concerns? By presenting large complex data sets in a dynamic format, such as an interactive map, users can easily visualize and manipulate large amounts relational data to look for patterns and correlations. Displaying data with potential correlates in a temporal context can be used to determine how patterns and relationships change over time. For salmon, decades of tag recovery information can be combined with a variety of potential environmental correlates and mapped together to create customized time-enabled dynamic displays of movement. Such mapping can provide insight into their ocean distribution and migration patterns relative to seasonal and long-term environmental change. Interactive maps help to visualize almost any kind of data while also fostering data sharing and collaborative research, providing tools to support future research and analyses, and promoting public outreach. Although these analyses are descriptive in nature, they can be used to develop hypotheses and questions to which more quantitative and statistical approaches can be applied.

*This is the first paragraph of an extended abstract. Download the full abstract below.

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr15/171.172.

Citation

Oxman, D., and S. Larsen.  2019.  Interactive mapping and dynamic data visualization—eye candy or useful tool for fisheries research?  N. Pac. Anadr. Fish Comm. Tech. Rep. 15: 171–172.  https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr15/171.172.