ManmithaPatya-Portfolio
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Final Project: Part I
Having grown up in a place full of thriving wildlife, I chose my final project to be centred around the natural world. Its main focus will be animal conservation. The project will highlight the importance of conservation, the causes of loss of wildlife, the budget allocation by geography for animal conservation and human intervention which negatively affects the natural world. From here, I will talk about the effects of loss of fauna, the most famous extinctions caused by humans mans, a few conservationists. I will conclude the project by suggesting the small steps we can take at a local level to help in preserving the natural world of which these animals are an integral part.
Project Audience
Through this project, I hope to strike a chord with those who hope to affect positive change in the environment but haven’t yet gone down that very rewarding path. The learnings from this project will address every individual across the globe and is a call to come together to help conserve the natural world.
Project Outline
1. Mindmap
The following is the mindmap that I created for my project. It helped me visualize the overall structures and the important details I should add in my project to make it effective. Creating this mindmap helped me not only retail my thoughts but also enabled me to build a path for my project.
The following is the mindmap I built for my project on Mindmeister.
2. Story Arc
Based on my mindmap, the following in the storyarc that I have developed for my projects. The emotional journey I expect the audience to experience is represented by the troughs and peaks in the representation. Where required, I also made note of the number of data visualizations for each important piece of information.
Now, I will break the project structure into various sections and talk about them and will also provide associated visualizations.
3. The current state of biodiversity in the world
In this section, I will talk about the global forest cover. As forests and jungles are the hotspots of thriving ecological systems, I will explore the area of global forest cover over years and shed light on how global forests are disappearing at the rate of one football pitch every six seconds.
Here, we will also take look at a visualization showcasing the number of species added to the endangered list each year. This will highlight how 1994 had the highest number of species being added to the list of endangered species.
3. The Living Planet Index and its Importance
In this section, I will relate back to the previous section by taking about the Living Planet Index (LPI). The LPI is a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity based on population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats. Here, we will see the changes in the LPI over the years and what it means to the ecosystem.
Furthermore, we will explore the causes of Loss of Wildlife and the Importance of Wildlife Conservation.
I will depict the importance of wildlife conservation with the help of an infogram.
4. The budget allocation for Wildlife Conservation
In this section, I will explore the annual global expenditure of WWF on Wildlife Conservation.
In addition to this, I will also shed some light on how the costs are distributed.
5. Famous Extinctions caused by humans
Here, I will share details of famous extinctions of species which were a direct result of human interference along with the year and the activity. Exclusion: I will not share details of Mass Extinctions Example: Dodo, Tasmanian Wolf, Stellar’s Sea Cow. I will Either create an infogram using the Adobe Suite or will list out the details.
6. Famous Conservationists
In this section, I will talk about some famous conservationists and the work that they did during their lifetime/ are currently doing. This is a section that I am conflicted about. On the one hand, I want to include it and on the other hand, I am questioning its place in my overall project. My rationale for including this is to show how ordinary men and women can make a global impact. I will make mentions of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Li Quan, Paula Kahumbu, Birute Galdikas, Margaret Murie among others.
7. Call To Action
Wildlife is very important for ecological balance. A stable environment provides conditions in which every living being can thrive. Even at a local level, we can start by fighting against deforestation which causes displacement of animals and we can promote afforestation. In addition to this, we can donate to wildlife funds who operate directly with conservationists who are on ground with animals. Conservation helps in not just continuity of life but also adds the possibility of discovery of new species which can further support ecological balance.
Data and Other Resources
Primary Data Sources
- This dataset from Our World in Data will be used to show the decline in forest area through the years. The dataset can be viewed here
- This dataset from Environmental Conservation Online System will be used to build the visualization of the number of species added to the endangered list annually. The dataset can be viewed here.
- This dataset from Our World in Data will be used to show the changes in the Living Plant Index by each year. The data can be viewed here
- A data table built from the visualization in Our World in Data will be used to make the visualization which tells us the number of species in danger divided by the driving forces. The dataset can be found here.
- This dataset from World Wildlife Org will be used to shed light on the annual expenditure for conservation activities. The data set can be found here.
Other Sources
The following are few websites that I will use for key information in this project
- From this website by Tree Hugger, I will obtain information about various conservationists
- From this website by the National Museum of Natural History, I will obtain information about Famous extinctions caused by man
Method and Medium
The primary platforms that I will use for my project will be serve the following purposes- To build visualizations, To make storyboards, To mind map my vision for the project and to serve an medium for the audience to experience my project.
To build visualizations, my primary platform will be Flourish. However, I will switch to tableau should I need more control on how my visualizations look. To make story boards, in addition to hand-drawing a few visualizations, I will make use of platforms like Balsamiq and Figma. For mind mapping, I will use Mindmeister, a platform I have been using for ~2 years now. In addition to there, for the infograms I plan in including, I will create them using the Adobe Suite.
And finally, I will use Shorthand to tell the story of Wildlife Conservation to the audience.