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Botanical Bullies

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About the map

According to a recent report , the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world - ranking in the bottom 10% for biodiversity. Invasive plants have the potential to rapidly degrade habitats, crowd out native species and reduce what biodiversity we still have. We wanted to create a map that highlighted where people using the iRecord App in 2024 were noting the presence of four problematic or dangerous species in England and Wales.

Why it works

We designed callout cards for each density map to summarise key facts and issues for readers unfamiliar with the species. The map also makes use of subtle but impactful visuals in the form of proportional bar charts. These save space whilst informing readers on which species are more commonly seen and what land-types they are found on. Finally, the symbology is inspired by parts of the plants themselves - such as stems and flowers. This builds visual links between related elements (pictures, maps and callouts) in the map.

Important Steps

  • 1.

    Decide on an appropriate extent and range of data when downloading from GBIF. We chose verified vascular plant iRecord entries for the year 2024.

  • 2.

    Ensure environment settings when working with rasters are uniform, by specifying the same values for ‘processing extent’, ‘snap raster’ and ‘mask’.

  • 3.

    Import country border layers from the Living Atlas and remove the basemap for a clean look.

  • 4.

    Create density maps that show species clustering. These also double as data distribution maps.

  • 5.

    Duplicate your map and store data for each species differently. Then, you can add species-specific maps to your layout with more control over each map’s symbology.

  • 6.

    Make multiple layouts to explore different designs, sizes and configurations.

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Requirements

  • Data and software

    We used the GBIF Data Portal to download point data for plant observations. The reference for our specific download can be found here. This data was augmented by with the following: Sentinel-2 Land Use (Esri), shapefiles of nature reserves, national parks and AONBs in England (Living Atlas) and Wales (Data Map Wales) and EIDC data on the native status of plants in the UK.

  • Analysis

    We used the Kernel Density tool to show statistically significant hotspots of observations. We also used the Extract Multi Values to Points tool to extract values from Esri’s Sentinel-2 Land Cover dataset and join them spatially to our point data.

  • Time

    Exploring the vast dataset and deciding on a focus for the map took the most amount of time. Once this was decided, running the processing tools and creating a finely furnished map took a couple of days.

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Tips and tricks

  • botanical-bullies-tip-1

    Text boxes in layouts

    Use formatting tags to make text standout. 

  • botanical-bullies-tip-2

    Managing Layout Elements

    When working with so many items/maps/graphics in a layout, create well-named groups to keep track of your layout’s contents.

  • botanical-bullies-tip-3

    Minimal bar charts

    Create a ‘100%’ stacked bar chart, flip the axes and remove all text and lines for a clean look.

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Links & Resources

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Matteo Zucchi

Map Author

Matteo Zucchi

Matteo studied geography at university and has joined the Graduate Programme at Esri UK. In his spare time, he can be found playing football, reading or trying to identify birds and plants.

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