Since Botanical Voyeur is about getting people interested in the prairie and native landscapes, it has to be done on public lands that are accessible to everyone. I can’t get people all worked up over plant sex if the only way to see it is in books. Voyeurism isn’t porn, it’s more personal than that. It pulls back the curtains and presents you with something to take in, palpable and within your grasp.
So then, the first step in getting Botanical Voyeur going is to take a close look at the public places around the state that are native, natural and wild. I quickly discovered that that information about public land is scattered and isolated on the web. The information is out there but it is a challenge to find and rarely links out to the community as a whole.
So, I’ve spent the last few days milling about the web looking into maps and map services. Most of today was spent looking at open mapping initiatives across the globe and today I pull back and start figuring out how best to proceed.
The plan is to have the public lands in Iowa on an open, publicly accessible map. It needs to be able to differentiate between different types of land use and allow for marking areas/boundaries. It should be easy to export data from and be accessible on mobile devices.
The next several days will be spent focusing on this particular issue and I plan to choose a map site and begin to create a map of the Iowa Prairies within the next week.
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