The Big Night

Using GIS to Improve a Citizen Science Project’s Functionality, Efficiency, and Capabilities

The Big Night Project (Maine) is a citizen science effort to monitor amphibian road crossings during breeding migrations to vernal pools. Local citizens head out into the night on the first warm, rainy week of spring to collect data on amphibian species (i.e. frogs, salamanders, etc.), and save them, while they attempt to cross streets towards their breeding (vernal) pools. Thousands of frogs and salamanders migrate each night during this first week of spring when the conditions are just right and the objective of the project is to prevent mortality while collecting migration data and engaging local citizens. In short, the Big Night seeks to identify important crossing sites by recruiting volunteers to collect data while directly relieving pressure from road mortality. In a world with increasingly fragmented habitat, decreasing amphibian populations, and changing climates, finding these migration routes will only become more important every year. This educational event is primarily for citizens and students in the northeastern United States. Citizens partake in this event by adopting predetermined road segments (0.3 km in length) and monitoring them for at least an hour during the migration period.

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Potential Mortality Rates of Vernal Pools

The Process:

Two main criteria that were used to determine this were the classification of the vernal pool, either significant or non significant, and the pools distance to the roads. These attributes were given a certain weight depending on their possible impact to amphibian mortality, for instance, a significant pool that is close to a road has a higher potential mortality then a non significant pool that is far from a road. I used geospatial processing techniques, such as the Euclidean distance tool, to determine the vernal pools distance form the roads. Each pool was given a value the ranged from 0 to 2. The higher the value, the greater the potential mortality for amphibians that use that pool.

Improving the Project:

One piece of data that could be useful in determine the potential mortality of a vernal pool would be the traffic data of the road(s) is it adjacent too. With this information, an other weighted category could be added that would further help determine if the amphibians that use the pool are at risk. Since traffic is the main killer of amphibians that need to cross these roads to breed, this data would be invaluable. 


The Big Night—Maine Amphibian Migration Monitoring Site Adoption Map

The Project:

This map depicts the locations of 272 monitoring sites (out of 306) with the accompanying attribute data. It also shows the locations of significant vernal pools (with a 250 foot buffer) and vernal pool center points (significant and insignificant) relative to the monitor sites. The study area is defined with the border of Maine and the individual county borders. This map allows one to pick a site based off the location on the map. A pop-up will appear with site information and a link to a registration survey. By filling out this survey it allows someone to automatically adopt a site.

The Process (brief description):

The Big Night Sites layer was created using the attribute table from the original big night sites kml file and the tables provided in the big night google drive used for adopting a site. A site identification was generated and used to create a spatial join between the two table thus creating the final Big Night Sites layer. The layer depicting the state border of Maine was created by taking the Maine county polygons layer from the Maine Geolibrary and using the dissolve geoprocessing tool to dissolve the boundaries of each polygon into one. After adjusting the symbology and finalizing the map I exported it to arcgis online. It was here that the final product was created. The symbology and visibility range was adjusted for each layer. Next, the pop-up was configured for each layer by deciding which fields would be visible. The pop-up for the Big Night Sites layer was configured in html to be depicted as a table containing each field and the corresponding attribute as well as a link to the survey123 created for adopting a site. This link will auto populate the first question with the corresponding site ID. This was done using the expression itemID?field:site_id={Site_ID}.

Improving The Big Night:

This project will help improve the Big Night's site adoption process. Prior to this, a site was adopted by accessing a Facebook page that would lead a participant to a Google Drive. From there they would be presented with an excel file for each county in Maine containing the site within that county. To adopt a site they would comb through the Excel file and enter their information. This project creates a more user friendly adoption system that is much easier for those adopting sites and the administrator. The map allows all of the site and biotic information to be contained on one platform. A user can now select the site they would like to adopt directly on the map. This new adoption process allows for an interactive way to view the data pertaining to the project as well as assures data quality.