By Year of Open Science
April 5, 2023
The process for making a snow cover map, from concept to product, is described in this example of Open Science.
Reproducible code demonstrating the evolution of a recent data viz of CONUS snow cover: Origin and development of a Snowflake Map
The USGS VizLab created a blog post outlining the process of how they made a snowflake hex map of the contiguous United States.
The final product shows whiter snowflakes where snow cover was higher, which was generally in the northern states and along the main mountain ranges. The team used a few interesting tricks and packages to make this map and overlay the snowflake shape. Follow the steps in the link to see how it was made.
The viz was made using an open-source program (R) and using open data on ScienceBase.gov. By sharing the code, clearly identifying the data sources, and sharing the write-up on social media, this example shows how we can foster reproducibility and new collaborations.
- Blog post: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/blog/snow-tiles-demo/
- Tweet: https://twitter.com/USGS_DataSci/status/1633182063539937280
- Related Data Release: Hammond, J.C., 2020, Contiguous U.S. annual snow persistence and trends from 2001-2020: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9U7U5FP.
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