Friday, March 07, 2014

GBIF data overlayed on Google Maps

SquareAs part of a project exploring GBIF data I've been playing with displaying GBIF data on Google Maps. The GBIF portal doesn't use Google Maps, which is a pity because Google's terrain and satellite layers are much nicer than the layers used by GBIF (I gather there are issues with the level of traffic that GBIF receives is above the threshold at which Google starts charging for access).

But because the GBIF developers have a nice API it's pretty easy to put GBIF data on Google maps, like this (the map is live):



The source code for this map is available as a gist, and you can see it live above, and at http://bl.ocks.org/rdmpage/9411457.