Threats to Critically Endangered Species
An article in the style of a scientific magazine, highlighting the largest threats to animals in different regions of the world.
I created this for a general scientific-minded audience. The text is drawn from this article about species on the brink of extinction: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32482862/. The data was manually collected from IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species on July 15, 2023. I filtered down to the “Animalia” kingdom and species considered “Critically endangered” and then collected numbers of species and the number of threats per geographic region. The final graphic highlights the % of all Animals in a region that are affected by each given threat.
I chose a radial chart for a few reasons. First, because the data counted the total number of species affected by each threat, rather than record-level numbers, it would be inaccurate to treat these numbers as parts of a whole. Instead, the radial chart lets the viewer see a big picture of which threats affect animals in a region and which threats stand out for that region. Individually each spoke increases in % of animals affected by a given threat. I also chose to highlight the increasing threats with a background color to the radial chart which is masked by the shape of the trends. This makes it easier to spot where the “dark spots” (e.g. high numbers) are quickly and makes it quick to assess how many 10% increments led to that point.
Finally, this was a personal project, so it was not made for an actual client, but as a learning exercise, I modeled the layout and fonts on articles from Scientific American.
Revision
I received feedback from my peers that it was hard to track which spoke corresponded with which category, and even though they’re all labeled in the first large radial chart, the lack of labels on the small multiples makes it hard to notice trends quickly.
To better highlight trends I created another version of this visualization. In this one I use an alluvial diagram to show the relationship between extinction patterns and geographic regions (which I aggregated into fewer groups than the previous chart).
I made this graphic using Google sheets for data collection and wrangling, RAW Graphs for the base radar charts, and then Illustrator for the final design and layout.
