A Visual Analytics System of Data Gathered from Colonial Seabirds

Visual environment techniques can support an easy exploration of large datasets. A visual environment has been developed to explore the breeding data of a monogamous and nest-site faithful seabird, the Scopoli's shearwater. The aim was to provide a tool, easy-to-use for ornithologists, to examine the history of the nests, and the relationships of the various factors affecting the variability in the breeding success during a four year time period. The tool is based on four coordinated views, linked to each other and to the dataset, each showing a different grouping of data according with spatial, temporal, and categorical criteria. This tool can help the ornithologists to pick up easily the similarities and differences between the nests and offers a new instrument for the first exploration of data.