This project shows the change in forest coverage from 2000 to 2010. The menu allows users to toggle the density - e.g. a threshold coverage of 30% shows the change in area of forest where 30% or greater tree coverage. Mousing over a specific country will show the change in area for forest of the selected density.

Proof of Concept and Development

Concept sketches, showing the idea for various amounts of tree coverage, highlighted country data, and the idea of sliders to highlight different aspects of the data set.

Exploration of suitable color schemes, and mapping color values to the data.

First pass at importing and representing the data.

Preliminary embedded project, importing a map with country outlines.

Test embedded feature with a rotating globe. Ultimately too difficult for conveying information.

Data Visualization

For this project, I created an embedded data visualization of annual tree coverage loss using javascript and html.

The data visualized for my project is the global tree coverage data from the Global Forest Service. This dataset details the change in tree cover across the globe between 2000 and 2021 for different countries. It was taken from satellite data by Hansen et. al (2013) with changing data collection methodology after this year. For this dataset, questions I was be interested in investigating included: are there differences in deforestation in different areas of the globe? Can these differences be related to economic status? Can they be related to starting forest density? What areas show reforestation?

Sources: https://www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/global/?category=forest-change

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1244693

The Github for this project can be found here.