Layer Methodology
Wildlife Observations
Observation-based biodiversity context from community science records.
Map Role
Verified wildlife observations used as a biodiversity signal across study areas.
What It Shows
This layer visualizes wildlife observations as both density and point records to help read where ecological activity, reporting, and habitat signals cluster around urban areas.
Sources
- iNaturalist observations distributed through GBIF
- Rangifer ETL for study-area filtering and vector-tile packaging
Method
- 1.Collect wildlife observations inside the study-area bounding boxes.
- 2.Normalize species, taxonomic group, date, and city metadata into a shared schema.
- 3.Publish the cleaned records as PMTiles with both heatmap and point rendering.
Refresh Cadence
Snapshot ETL. Refresh when the wildlife observation crawl is rerun and the tile package is rebuilt.
Coverage
Seven study areas centered on Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Victoria.
Key Fields
species
Observed taxon name
taxon_group
High-level group used for styling and browsing
observed_on
Observation date when present
city
Study area assigned by the ETL
Caveats
- Observation density reflects reporting effort as much as ecological abundance.
- Highly visited parks and trails will usually over-index.
- Absence of observations should not be interpreted as absence of wildlife.