News & Events

New Release: Range Mapper, Animated Maps of Species Distributions

We’re excited to announce the release of [Range Mapper](https://geography.wisc.edu/ran...) and its publication [George et al.,2023, Open Quaternary](https://openquaternary.com/art...) Range Mapper presents a new set of online interactive and animated maps of the changes in plant (and megafaunal) distributions in North America, Europe, and Oceania since the peak of the last Ice Age. These animations can be readily used by educators and students interested in learning about the effects of climate change and ecosystems. Experts may also find these maps useful for quick-look insights into past patterns and processes at broad scales. Each map is based upon networks of fossil data drawn from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. The accompanying paper by George et al, (Range Mapper: An adaptable process for making and using interactive, animated web maps of Late-Quaternary open paleoecological data) describes the design philosophy and process, and all code is posted to [Github](https://github.com/NeotomaDB/R...) and [Zenodo](https://zenodo.org/record/7600...). This work can be readily adapted by other interested users to show other species or taxonomic groups of interest. Range Mapper was developed by Adrian George and Sydney Widell at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with advice from Rob Roth and Jack Williams and support from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Posted April 21, 2023 by Jack Williams