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Final Maps and Reflection: Poster of Sea Turtle Disorientations and Light Pollution in Florida

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  How do you feel about your final maps and poster? What parts of your project do you particularly like? Dislike? Why?  I feel like my final maps and poster are a success! The map shows exactly what I needed to make my point on the importance of sea turtle conservation. I was able to make this project my own. Although I used two separate maps created by an outside source, I used my critical thinks to develop an interactive map to show the relationship between artificial lighting, major coastal cities, and sea turtle disorientation events. There is nothing I disliked about this project. It took many hours to work on, but I am happy with the results.  What would you differently if you were to do re-start the semester and do this project again? Why? I am not sure if I would do anything differently. Possibly, I would want to dig deeper and find out other factors that impact the population of sea turtles. I would then create more maps with the information I found.  What is something that yo
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Final Draft Map - Sea Turtle Disorientations and Light Pollution in Florida

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  What has been the most surprising aspect of the project so far and why? The most surprising aspect is how accurately Florida's major cities with high values of light align with the reported sea turtle disorientation events. This shows evidence on how much sea turtles are affected by artificial lighting. Additionally, I found it surprising how well my map has come together! What has been the most challenging aspect of the project so far? The most challenging aspect of this project has been adding all the layers to one map and perfecting it. For the first layer (Nighttime lights), I had to change the color ramp a few times to find a color scheme that would show the best. In the second layer (Sea Turtle Disorientation Survey), I had to remove some of the unverified reports that were displayed on the map. Finally, for the third layer (The USA Major Cities) I used select by attributes to create a new layer only showing Florida's major cities. I removed the symbology of the cities
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First Map of Project Data

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  This is the first rough draft of the map I plan to create that displays Sea Turtle Disorientations. My hope is to create an interactive web map, but I am not sure how this will work for the poster. The program I chose to use for this project is ArcGIS Pro. This map displays the Nightime Lights and how it directly affects the sea turtle population. You can see that the areas with the highest value of light have the most disorientations surveyed.  Although I think this map is decent, I am still figuring out ArcGIS Pro. My original intent was to label the Major Cities in Florida. I still plan to do this in some way without overcrowding the map. Each of my datasets was found on ArcGIS Online. I found this data by doing a web search. This map is still in the process as I need to add a description and the sources I actually use onto the page. The legend and possibly the symbology need to be polished as well.  Data Sources:  FWC Sea Turtle Disorientation Survey(2018) Florida Fish and Wildli
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Sea Turtle Disorientations and Light Pollution Final Project Proposal

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Sea Turtle Disorientations and Light Pollution (FLORIDA) Victoria Spadaro  Siena College October 3, 2022  Introduction: Light pollution can heavily influence animal behaviors. Disorientation from artificial lighting can impact sea turtles by disrupting hatchlings' journey to the ocean. This is a major conservation issue in Florida. Unfortunately, sea turtles are heading inland, which can often lead to death from predation and dehydration. Objectives:   My goal for this project is to create an interactive web map that displays light pollution at night and disorientation events on the coasts of Florida. I will explore the relationship between the two and observe how harmful artificial lights can be to the sea turtle population. I plan to also map Florida's major cities and compare them with the light pollution map. This will show whether or not coastal developments play a role in nesting destruction.   Background Information: Sea turtles move toward the brightest direction whic
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