Data Visualization: Coral Bleaching through the Decades
This mock interactive data visualization prototype provides a visual overview of increases in coral bleaching frequency from 1986-2017. Users will be able to view the overall trends and relationships with sea temperature changes, having the opportunity to view more detailed information on the countries most affected, along with bleaching severity spatial data.
The target audience is geared towards visitors of coral reef conservation websites who want to educate themselves more on the specifics of coral bleaching. A secondary target audience would be coral researchers who would this as a visual database to see details of mass coral bleaching events.
Client: Prof. Jodie Jenkinson
Media: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Tableau, Raw Graphs
Format: Website
Audience: Educated lay audience
Date: December 2020
Process work
Data Collection & Organization
Datasets from multiple sources were used to retrieve data on specific variables (i.e. location, bleaching severity, temperature, dates, number of bleaching reports, and sea surface temperatures). The data was organized and cleaned with Tableau Prep.
Thumbnails + Comprehensive
Thumbnails were sketched to consider and explore various options for presenting the copy and data for each screen.
A comprehensive was created to plan more specific content for each screen while detailing the interactive elements.
Asset Building and Wireframing
Cleaned data was brought into Tableau to construct the maps with the specific spatial points, indicating where coral bleaching events were reported. Raw graphs was used to create circle shapes with associated sizes, representative of the number of countries with coral bleaching report(s). This was then brought into Adobe Illustrator for integration with the main graph. Illustrations were created with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. All visual assets were then brought into Adobe XD for the wireframing step.
Final Graph Screen
Datasets
National Centers for Environmental Information. The Global Anomalies and Index Data. Retrived November 8, 2020 from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/anomalies.php#anomalies
ReefBase. Coral Bleaching. Retrieved November 8, 2020 from http://www.reefbase.org/gis_maps/datasets.aspx
ReefBase. Reef Location. Retrieved November 8, 2020 from http://www.reefbase.org/gis_maps/datasets.aspx
Rodriguez-Ramirez, A., González-Rivero, M., Beijbom, O., Bailhache, C., Bongaerts, P., Brown, K. T., Bryant, D. E. P., Dalton, P., Dove, S., Ganase, A., Kennedy, E. V., Kim, C. J. S., Lopez-Marcano, S., Neal, B. P., Radice, V. Z., Vercelloni, J., Beyer, H. L., & Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (2020). A contemporary baseline record of the world’s coral reefs. Scientific Data, 7(1), 355. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00698-6
Van Woesik, R., Burkepile, D. (2019) Bleaching and environmental data for global coral reef sites from 1998-2017. Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2019-07-18. doi:10.1575/1912/bco-dmo.773466.1 [November 19, 2020]
Article References
Baird, A. H., Bhagooli, R., Ralph, P. J., & Takahashi, S. (2009). Coral bleaching: The role of the host. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24(1), 16–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2008.09.005
Baker, A. C., Glynn, P. W., & Riegl, B. (2008). Climate change and coral reef bleaching: An ecological assessment of long-term impacts, recovery trends and future outlook. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 80(4), 435–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2008.09.003
Douglas, A. E. (2003). Coral bleaching––how and why? Marine Pollution Bulletin, 46(4), 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0025-326X(03)00037-7
Oakley, C. A., & Davy, S. K. (2018). Cell Biology of Coral Bleaching. In M. J. H. van Oppen & J. M. Lough (Eds.), Coral Bleaching: Patterns, Processes, Causes and Consequences (pp. 189–211). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75393-5_8
Stanley, G. D., & van de Schootbrugge, B. (2009). The Evolution of the Coral–Algal Symbiosis. In M. J. H. van Oppen & J. M. Lough (Eds.), Coral Bleaching (Vol. 205, pp. 7–19). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69775-6_2