Allison James
Middlebury College
Research Mentor: Stacie Hardy
Project: Interactive R Shiny app to display harbor seal abundance in Alaska
My name is Allison James, and I am a senior majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Biology at Middlebury College in Vermont. This summer, I worked in the Marine Mammal Lab of NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center at Sand Point under the guidance of data scientist Stacie Hardy. My project was to develop an interactive web application to display harbor seal abundance estimates in Alaska.
Counts taken from aerial surveys in Alaska over known harbor seal haul out locations are used to calculate estimates. The Alaskan coastline is divided into survey units, with each survey unit located inside a larger fishing stock. Using data sets containing these estimates, as well as 8-year trend estimates and the most recent survey date, I began coding an app using the Shiny package in RStudio.
The app has interactive features for the user to both view and explore the data. A Leaflet map displays two sets of polygons: the survey units colored by harbor seal abundance and the larger fishing stocks. Clicking on an individual survey unit displays a popup window with additional information, such as its ID. The user can filter the data by doing any of the following: choosing a stock from the drop-down menu, clicking an individual survey unit, drawing a shape around a subset of units, or drawing a circle of a specific radius. Clicking an “Update Plot” button then updates plots that show abundance over time, trend over time, and total units surveyed per year.
This app will be useful for a variety of purposes, such as analyzing population health or determining the number of individuals potentially impacted by a natural disaster or new development. When completed, it will be posted on a public RStudio server hosted by NOAA for the use of researchers, conservation managers, and the general public. In the future, more extensive datasets will be loaded into the app so that different types and timeframes of trend analyses can be calculated.
Overall, my experience both working at NOAA and attending seminars with my fellow interns was a fantastic experience thanks to CICOES and my mentor, Stacie Hardy!
Project introduction
Research poster
