Snapshot Wisconsin..the first 50 million photos

Welty Environmental Center is proud to be a partner in the Wisconsin DNR’s project, Snapshot Wisconsin. Our fantastic, long-time volunteer, Bruce Cawkins maintains and checks the camera we have located in Big Hill Park.  Every few months, he pulls the card and goes through all photos taken with the motion-activated trail cam, and forwards pictures of animals to the website Zooniverse, where citizen scientists can help ID the photos. The data is collected and tabulated, and you can search the dashboard by animal to see graphs  like: Percentage of Cameras that Tracked Bears/Coyotes/Bobcats/etc; Detections by Hour; Species by Ecological Landscape. Very Cool!

Left: the WI Snapshot process  Right: the Snapshot interactive map

In honor of the 50 millionth (!) photo uploaded, the Snapshot WI team assembled an interactive map, with a favorite photo chosen to represent each county.  It’s a great snapshot (ahem) of the ecological diversity of the state of Wisconsin. 

Take some time to play with each of these sites over the holiday break…it’s really fun to see who’s out walking around and the conclusions you can draw from the data.  Science!

Brenda Plakans
Executive Director, WEC
info@weltycenter.org
608-361-1377