(I hope I'm in the right place....) Our research question was simple: Does Japanese Knotweed occur in both Jackman and Vinalhaven (two very different places....)? I believe our hypothesis was correct. We predicted that it would indeed occur in both places. Andy found it in Jackman and posted it, and it was confirmed. And I found it on Vinalhaven, and it was confirmed. This leads me to another question: How extensive is the range of Japanese knotweed in Maine? Maybe I'll try to make a map to find out.... Any thoughts, Andy?? :)
Knotweed
It would seem it has quite a range but looking at data on a map sounds fun.
Fast Maps on vitalsignsme.org
Hi there,
You have a great idea about making a map to show you where knotweed has been looked for by Vital Signs-ers. This is super easy to do right in the website. Here are the directions in a nutshell:
1. Go to the Explore Data tab, then choose "view data on a map" from the options that appear on the lighter grey navigation bar
From here, you have two options.
Option A: use the table to the left of the map to choose only Japanese knotweed/ Fallopia japonica
1. Click the check marks in the yellow band to UN-select all the Found and Not Found species
2. Above the table (line above), switch selection from "Common Name" to "Scientific Name" (selecting species using scientific name is more efficient as all common names will appear together, despite not starting with the same letter - this will make more sense, I hope, when you actually do it)
3. Scroll down the list of species, which are now appearing in alphabetical order of scientific name, which still appears in smaller font under the common name.
4. Select ALL the check boxes corresponding to your scientific name of choice - in this case, you'd click the boxes corresponding with "Bamboo" and "Japanese knotweed" because they are both Fallopia japonica (this demonstrates an excellent point about common names (there can be many) and scientific ones (there is only one per species) and the resulting utility of scientific ones
Voila! Your map appears on the right! Grey boxes are where it was looked for and not found, red where it was looked for and found
Option B: use advanced search to select the data you want
1. Open "Advanced Search" by clicking on it - it's just above the map on the right hand side
2. Enter "Fallopia japonica" in the keyword search box on the far left
3. Clean up your results (when I did this, someone's observation of Daucus carota was returned - they must have mentioned Fallopia japonica in their notes) by unchecking the boxes corresponding to non-knotweed observations
Your cleaned up map shows up on the right.
Hope that's useful!
gbh