Live Biodiversity Spotlight
🎯 Try it now: Click on any point below to see species with unusual activity patterns
Live Anomaly Detection
What the indicators mean
The 0–10 activity indicator reflects how unusual recent observations are versus seasonal baseline and typical range.
- Seasonality: compares recent observation counts to the same period in prior years
- Geography: weighs distance from known range and cluster dispersion
- Evidence: boosts when photos/audio are present and geolocation is precise
- Recency: emphasizes observations in the last 24–72 hours
Interpretation:
- 0–4: within expected variation
- 5–7: notable shift—worth a look
- 8–10: strong departure—investigate context
Indicators are directional, not proof. Review local conditions, observer notes, and licensing/attribution.
Mission
Help naturalists and city planners notice meaningful biodiversity changes sooner, using real observations and explainable indicators. The focus: timely signals, clear provenance, and an accessible map that works well on everyday devices.
Feature set
Frame time
Data freshness
Accessibility
API latency
Data Providers
iNaturalist
Citizen science observations with photos and research grade classifications
eBird
Cornell Lab's bird sighting database with seasonal migration patterns
GBIF
Global Biodiversity Information Facility aggregating museum and research data
System Architecture
Spec & Goals
Build goals
- Detect unusual biodiversity activity within 15 minutes of observation
- Explain indicators with provenance and confidence bands
- Keep map interactions smooth at 50K points
Data & API
- iNaturalist recent observations (JSON), with ETag and paging
- Adapters for GBIF/eBird for cross-coverage
- API: GET /api/biodiversity/observations?bbox=&since=
Key Features
Interactive Mapping
- • Hex density visualization with clustering
- • Animated anomaly halos for unusual activity
- • Vector tiles for performance at scale
- • Keyboard navigable with screen reader support
Anomaly Detection
- • Spatial scan statistics on H3 hex grid
- • Seasonality baseline with Hampel filtering
- • False discovery rate control
- • Evidence cards with statistical confidence
Taxonomy Intelligence
- • Canonical backbone with synonym resolution
- • Interactive sunburst visualization
- • Cross-provider taxon normalization
- • Homonym and regional variant handling
Accessibility First
- • WCAG 2.2 AA compliance verified
- • Full keyboard navigation support
- • Screen reader optimized with ARIA
- • High contrast and reduced motion options
Quality Assurance
Testing
- • Unit tests with golden datasets
- • Contract tests with cassettes
- • Integration tests with mocks
- • E2E tests with Playwright
Performance
- • Load testing with k6 scripts
- • WebGL frame metric capture
- • Memory budget monitoring
- • Bundle size enforcement
Observability
- • OpenTelemetry distributed tracing
- • Structured logging with context
- • Prometheus metrics and alerting
- • Schema drift detection
Security
- • Key vault for API tokens
- • CORS restrictions
- • Rate limiting per token
- • Audit logs for sensitive actions