Three Visualization Approaches for Communicating and Exploring Passive Integrated Transponder Tag Data

As the number, size, and complexity of ecological data sets have increased, narrative and interactive raw data visualizations have emerged as important tools for exploring and understanding these large data sets. As a demonstration, we developed three visualizations to communicate and explore passive integrated transponder tag data from two long-term field studies. We created three independent visualizations for the same data set, allowing separate entry points for users with different goals and experience levels. The first visualization uses a narrative approach to introduce users to the study. The second visualization provides interactive crossfilters that allow users to explore multivariate relationships in the data set. The last visualization allows users to visualize the movement histories of individual fish within the stream network. This suite of visualization tools allows a progressive discovery of more detailed information and should make the data accessible to users with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests.