Monarch Butterfly Migration Explorer

This map was originally created in 2013, when there was a huge drop in the number of Monarch butterflies that made it to Canada. Let's see if we can see the difference using Flickr photos.

Using geotagged photos from Flickr we've created a heatmap of the migration of the Monarch butterfly over the past several years.

Loading Data from Flickr, (this will take a while, give it a minute or two).

Sightings per year:

The Monarch Butterfly Migration Explorer was created by John Beales. Contribute on GitHub

Mapping the Monarch Butterfly

By searching Flickr for geotagged photos we can see where people were seeing Monarch butterflies this year, and every year since 2008. We get a list of photos captured between January 1 and today's date of each year, then generate a heatmap for each year, using the same scale for each year.

The data isn't perfect, for example Flickr itself has had ups & downs over the past few years, and the number of digital cameras that we've been carrying has been changing quickly, but this should give us some idea of what's going on.

There are still things I'd like to add if time allows: