A Crosslinked, Mapped Guide to Natural Areas Plants
22 February 2008 - 10:42, Tinman said
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In designing the SF Natural Areas web site, one of the goals was to be able to construct over time a useful guide to specific native plants of interest in San Francisco. Whether or not contributors to this site ultimately generate such a resource, the engineering is here to make it happen.
Here’s how it works. A contributor can
- Upload a photo of a plant
- Title it with the common and scientific names
- Describe it with these names plus other interesting info
- Tag it with the common name (the scientific name could also be used, but since these are far longer in most cases and since most other visitors are going to be looking for the common name, that is the better choice)
- Include a Location link in the photo description
Here’s an example of the result. This is a photo of a soap plant on Twin Peaks. Note the description below the photo where you can read the common and scientific names and also follow a link to where this particular plant is located.
Also, you can go to the main tags page where you’ll see a bunch of tags including SoapPlant. These tags are sized in proportion to the number of photos in the collection. In the case of the soap plant, there are (as of this posting) only two images, so its tag is quite small. Still, you can see how the tagging system collects photos for a given species from all the various Natural Areas sites (Mt D and Twin Peaks in this case).
“Locations” embed Google maps with markers showing a specific spot, and as many of these can be created for each Natural Area as there are relevant locations to show. (Creating and managing them involves a higher level of Superpowers than do blogging and photo uploading, but once set up, these locations are obviously reusable and don’t need frequent messing with.)
Whether the SF Natural Areas web site will come to be used to house this kind of resource will depend on how much interest there is amongst contributors. The process of constructing this crosslinked, mapped guide to the native plants in San Francisco is a simple one, but it does involve several steps that require a bit of attention. So we shall see whether this gains traction or not.
In the meantime, we’ll continue the site’s primary purpose—displaying the contributions and work of volunteers in defense of our remnant native habitats!
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