ISSS608 2017-18 T3 Assign Saurav Jhajharia (Q3)
VAST Challenge 2018 MC2: Like a Duck to Water
Q3
After reviewing the data, do any of your findings cause particular concern for the Pipit or other wildlife? Would you suggest any changes in the sampling strategy to better understand the waterways situation in the Preserve?
Cause of concern
After analyzing the data so far and looking at the different dashboards, I have realized that the cause of concern for Pipit or other wildlife is the constant rise in the value of chemicals over the years. Methylosmolene, the chemical classified to be highly toxic, was seen to be rising over the years exponentially in a few locations.
Diving deep into this data, we can see that there was a suspicious jump in the level of Methylosmolene in Kohsoom in August 2016. This chemical's presence was also seen in the soil to have increased, and the suspicion was that it is due to the dumping of harmful chemicals that this had happened.
While this is one example, there are many such chemicals showing an upward trend in their average value over the years. All such chemicals were filtered and kept for further analysis and visualizations. The Tableau public file showing all these chemicals with their visible trends can be accessed here.
Sampling strategy
There were many chemicals for whom enough data wasn't available for understanding the exact nature of their behavior. They were either missing data at critical points of time or were not taken consistently over a time period long enough to be judged on.