There is a growing concern that Montana’s waterways are at risk of new invasive aquatic species, which are known to spread rapidly through US rivers and lakes, negatively affecting water quality and altering ecosystems and natural habitats.
Researchers and investigators have been dedicating more attention to this issue and they are now using new tools to better understand the level of impact.
As we can see in this CartoDB visualization made by Ken Rand, some of these invasive species have already made their way to Montana:
To avoid these aquatic species from spreading to new areas and reproducing in Montana’s canals, Luikart decided to leverage CartoDB’s location intelligence and find out where the most affected areas are so that he can make better decisions on how to respond.
In order to achieve this goal, Luikart and his team took eDNA analysis from waterways, simplified the inspection and made early detection of invasive species easier.
Also, by using CartoDB’s platform they are tracking the evolution of each specie from 1902 up until recent years to fully understand the reality of the situation in the US.
If you are interested in discovering more about what CartoDB’s geospatial data analysisis able to achieve, have a look at this page.
Happy data mapping!