State List map by Drew Weber

State List map

by Drew Weber - August 17, 2011 - Analysis, Birding, Listing - 7 comments

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While working on some of my data for my grad thesis, I have played around with how to best visualize data using the stats program R. This led from one thing to another, and surprise, I ended up making a graphic from my state life lists. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what I can probably do with this but here is the product of just a few hours work this evening. One thing is certain, I need to go back and enter some of my old lists because I know I have seen a lot more species in some of the states than this chart shows.

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Drew Weber

I am a young ornithologist originally from PA but now living in central New York. I am pursuing a master's degree at Penn State University studying grassland birds and their relationships with different agricultural practices. When I am not working feverishly on my thesis, I enjoy adding new birds to my county, state and life lists, digiscoping and getting outdoors. I am active in the Pennsylvania birding community as chairman of the bird records committee, as well as a reviewer for sightings submitted to eBird. Some topics that really interest me are migration, bird distributions and vagrancy. Contact me if you have any questions about birds and birding in PA.

Latest posts by Drew Weber (see all)

More migration plus scattered storms over NY cause fallout - May 22, 2013
Strong flight with possible upstate NY fallout - May 21, 2013
ABA Bird of the Year Multimedia Art Contest Announcement - May 20, 2013
Best flight this year - May 18, 2013
North winds slow migration in east, tonight could be more of the same - May 17, 2013

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http://abqbirding.wordpress.com Matt

That’s so cool. I’ve used R in the past but my skills are pretty rusty. Where did you get the map from? Did you use the map() function? I wonder if you could expand this to counties easily. A GIS program would probably help with that.
- http://nemesisbird.com Drew
  
  I used the googleVis library. I actually have GIS set up to take my lists from eBird and make some nice maps of counties. Check out the attached image.
  - Rtwillia
    
    Drew, would you share the code you used to identify the county borders in gvisGeoMap()? Also, do you know of a way to map a single state and counties (or other arbitrary borders) within it? Very curious about this. Thanks!
    - http://nemesisbird.com Drew
      
      The county map is all in ArcGIS. Unfortunately google doesn’t seem to have a good way to do counties with their tools so I haven’t found a way to do what you are looking for.
http://twitter.com/blobbybirdman Mark Robinson, Ph.D

This makes my bird nerd happy, any chance you would share the R code with lazier bird nerds?
- http://nemesisbird.com Drew
  
  Mark, give this code a try.
  # Google Chart Tools sample
  # install.packages(“googleVis”, dependencies=T)
  library(googleVis) # load googleVis library
  # demo(“googleVis”) #check out demo for lots of map options
  # create a csv with columns for state name (State) and life list(Life)
  
  df<-read.csv("states.csv", na.strings="NA",header=TRUE)
  
  ## Geo Map, requires Flash
  statelife <- gvisGeoMap(df, "State", "Life", options=list(region="US", dataMode="regions", width=700, height=500))
  
  plot(statelife)
http://twitter.com/andrewmcgann Andrew McGann

Here’s to more posts utilizing Program R! Keep ‘em coming, Drew. Thanks for posting the script too!

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