Buffelgrass Forecast Shiny App

This map was created by Travis Matlock as a product of USA National Phenology Network. It is a Raster plus Spatial Point map of Arizona that calculates the number of distinct precipiation "events" over a 30-day rolling period prior to the forecast date. The number of these events, in turn, is used to forecast areas where buffelgrass will be "greening up" in the following 1-2 weeks.

A rainfall event is counted as any calendar day with precipitation over 0.25 in. In order to distinguish separate events, a "buffer" of three days with little or no rainfall must occur following an event in order for the next day with rainfall over 0.25 in to be counted as a new event. The first day of the buffer must witness 0" of precipitation. This sequence is calculated separately for each Raster cell and for each Spatial Point to determine its event value.

Raster data is obtained from the PRISM climate group at Oregon State University. Spatial point data represents individual precipitation gauges and is obtained from both RainLog and NOAA's RCC-ACIS precipitation data (labels are given by clicking on points in the interactive map).

This iteration of this map was entered into the 2024 UA Libraries Data Visualization Challenge.