Technology

Overview

The site was put together using data from NatureServe, the National Atlas and the USGS water resources and Nonindegenous Aquatic Species programs. Digital Distribution Maps of the Freshwater Fishes of the Conterminous United States, Version 3.0 was obtained from NatureServe and downloaded as a Microsoft Access database. I converted this database to a more normalized (in my opinion) version that was also more appropriate for the internet. Additionally, I downloaded a list of the regions, subregions, basins, and subbasins (watersheds) from the USGS and entered these into the database as well. I then associated the fish species to the watersheds and the data entry was completed.

For the KML files I used two sources. The individual watershed maps were extracted from the July 2004 release of the North American Atlas - Hydrography. The KML files for the species ranges were downloaded from NatureServe as GIS shapefiles. Both the NatureServe shape files and the National Atlas shape files were converted to KML files using shp2kml 2.0.

The nonindigenous species were queried from the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species advanced query tool. I extracted any non-native fish species that was defined as established. This gave me 137 species which I added to the database. I then looked up the watersheds where these 135 were established and added the cross reference to the database.

September 2015 Update

The technology and implementation has changed slightly since first inception. The site no longer uses the Google Earth plug-in or KML files. It now uses geoJSON files for watershed maps. Additionally, the site is now integrated with the API's of both FishNet 2 and the USGS NAS to display collection data. Species that did not have KML watershed files now show data, and KML files that were too large too load have been replaced as well. The tools toGeoJSON and json-minify were used to create the geoJSON files.

Novemeber 2018 Update

The site continues slight technology changes. We now allow users to submit data and this is stored in a new database. There is also an approval process admin back end. Additionally, the site is now integrated with the API's of iNaturalist.org, GBIF.org, and iDigBio.org to display collection data. This brings the total of data sources to seven for the site. The future steps are to expand to all fish species and use IUCN Redlist maps for saltwater species.