It’s Labor Day Weekend in North America – the traditional end of summer, if not the season’s end as marked by the equinox. To acknowledge the impending shift to autumn, this week’s Data Driven Digest is about seasons – how they affect vegetation, energy use, and air quality.
Fall Back: The very first Data Driven Digest we published almost a year ago contained a link to the lovely Fall Foliage Map published by SmokyMountains.com. So I was delighted to hear from David Angotti (@DavidAngotti) that the 2015 Fall Foliage Map is now online. Based on more than 37,000 data points, the map visualizes fall color creeping across the United States; move a slider (representing time) and watch the colors change. “The data behind the map is primarily a conglomeration of NOAA precipitation forecasts, daylight and temperature forecasts, historical precipitation data for the current year, and a deduction of many government and private party data sources available online,” Melton says developer Wes Melton. “Once we have accumulated the data, there are manual changes we then make to the dataset based on our knowledge of the topic.”
Power Up: Energy use shifts logically with the seasons: In summer it’s used for cooling, while in winter energy is applied to lighting and heating. What’s less apparent is where the energy comes from. The Washington Post team of John Muyskens, Dan Keating and Samuel Granados published a terrific interactive site that explores how the United States generates electricity. Each circle on the map represents a power plant; the size of the circle represents the plant’s output, and the color of the circle reveals its power source. Roll over the main map (click through for the interactive version) to see a breakdown by state. Farther down in the site you’ll find an interactive bar chart showing the same data in a very different manner. If you’re interested in exploring more energy-related data, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook publishes incredibly detailed reports on a monthly basis.
Smoke Signals: Our colleague Michelle Ballou, who lives smack dab in the middle of Washington State, visited our San Mateo office this week and talked about the choking smoke from seasonal wildfires in her areas. Coincidentally, my colleague Michael Singer (@MichaelSinger) learned about BlueSky . A project of the United States Forest Service Research & Development arm, BlueSky links a variety of independent data models – fire information, fuel loading, fire consumption, fire emissions, and smoke dispersion – and uses predictive models to simulate and animate the cumulative impacts of smoke on air quality from forest, agricultural, and range fires. The Forest Service, by the way, collects and shares a wealth of public data sets.
Seeing Spots (Bonus Item): Shout out to Massimiliano Mauro (@MM_cco), an app designer for Wired Italia, for the stylish and functional 3D data visualization shown above. Called 3D and D3.js, it is a Braille-inspired three-dimensional data visualization that shows invisible air pollution (unlike the smoke in Michelle’s town, which is very visible). Each dot represents a day, and days are arranged by season to better reveal patterns in the data.
Like what you see? Every Friday we share great data visualizations and embedded analytics. If you have a favorite or trending example, tell us: Submit ideas to blogactuate@actuate.com or add a comment below. Subscribe (at left) and we’ll email you when new entries are posted.
Recent Data Driven Digests:
August 28: Treemaps for stock prices, Android devices, global irrigation, cultural output
August 21: X-Y coordinates for college majors, scientific research, business analysis
August 14: Viewing over oceans, seeing under the sea, mapping rivers’ width