Ecological Distribution Application

[lukeshillabeer]

Hi SF (I'm hoping this abbreviation is used...),

 

I'm currently working on an ecological dataset that includes large amounts of geographical distribution information for a lecturer. Each species has a list of countries/regions that it is known to inhabit and one of my jobs is to interpret and condense this information into more generic terms, for instance;

 

"France, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgeria" would get condensed into something like "SW Europe".

 

This is VERY time consuming as trying to reconcile some of the strange patterns like "Spain, Turkey, Thailand, South Africa" ends up making my job rough.

 

What I'd like to have is an application which lets me input the names of countries and responds by differentiating those countries on a global map. I've got SOME computer science background so a Google-Maps mashup isn't out of the question for my own development, but if such a tool already exists it would make my life MUCH easier.

 

So ecology-peeps... Any ideas? Applications or websites you think might be able to help me out here? Would anybody else find an application like this even useful.

 

 

------------------ADDITIONAL NOTE-----------------------

 

 

Just for some reference (after some searching) something SIMILAR to this, but much more suitable for quick data entry (throw a list of countries into a box and hit a button, they change colour on the map) is basically what I'm looking for;

 

http://edit.freemap....sion/edit/world

Edited August 29, 2011 by lukeshillabeer

[jeskill]

So you want to make a map showing which species are found in which countries?

 

I've not heard of an app like that. I normally use ArcGIS to make maps -- that could be done fairly quickly on ArcGIS if you had all the data in spreadsheet form with the species in the columns and the countries in the rows. However, that does require some understanding of GIS. It also requires that your school actually has ArcGIS on their computers.