Extinction Explorer

Hannah Nisonson described it in a post on Esri Community.¹ An ArcGIS Knowledge Graph holds species, observations and source documents.¹ A knowledge graph is a database of entities and their connections. Interactions come from Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI), reduced to eight relationship types such as predates, pollinates and nests in.¹ Observations come from iNaturalist and other datasets in GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.¹ Three hops out from the threatened species it starts with, the graph holds about 3,000 species, 8,000 relationships and tens of thousands of observations.¹

Selecting a species treats it as an extinction event.¹ The app works out which neighbours lose relationships or become isolated, and highlights the cascade in both the map and the network.¹ Each event is logged and can be reversed.¹ Nisonson presents this as a way to see dependencies.¹

Everything runs in the browser.¹ The ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript renders observations as 3D pushpins over terrain, 3d-force-graph with three.js draws the network, and openCypher, a query language for graphs, fetches the data.¹ A demo is linked from the post.¹