The data used in these visualizations came from a 2025 study following the change in insect populations in Cerro Seco Unit 5, which is a research area located within the Valles Caldera National Preserve in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. The study was tracking the change in insect populations within control and thinned forest areas. The thinning treatment that parts of the forest underwent involved cutting down the majority of trees to reveal open land, which is useful in areas that have such a dense tree population that their canopy suffocates the ground below. 

Tactful thinning and prescribed slash burning is also mainly used for the prevention of wildfires to reduce tree mass and burn off any excess flammable material on the ground. Cerro Seco Unit 5 comprises 112 acres and was densely covered in second-growth mixed conifer forest. The treatment in Cerro Seco Unit 5’s treated areas included thinning the trees prior to the 2018 summer season and a prescribed slash burn in 2019. The study documents each insect found and splits the findings on whether they were found in a control (untreated) or treated forest area. The researchers also recorded each insect’s sex, age, whether they were found in/around logs and their taxonomical classification. 

I wanted to use this data because I strongly believe in the necessity of including controlled burns in land management protocol and rectifying indigenous people’s allowance and access to conduct fires, and I am interested in the data that exists to support it. Most of the impact from thinning and controlled burns is recorded in terms of wildfire prevention and management, so I thought that this research emphasizing fire’s profound impacts on biodiversity may further bolster the significance of fire in natural environments. Through visualizations I want to create an overall picture of the land over time and the differences that arise between the treated and untreated forest.

My first design was a bar chart depicting the insect counts over each month of the collection period, totaled across all years of the study (2017-2022). I split the bars up by color according to the distribution of taxonomical families present. The three familial classifications were that of the grasshopper, bush cricket (very few), and camel cricket. We can see that grasshopper and cricket populations peak in July and August and then start decreasing although the cricket sticks around longer than the grasshopper, with a substantial population still present in October. This makes sense as grasshoppers usually die off with the first frost and next year’s generations survive the winter as eggs. This chart therefore gives us insight into the annual routines of the grasshoppers and crickets in the area, which may be generalized to their behavior anywhere with a similar climate.

My second design was a line chart because I wanted to specifically highlight the increase in insect counts in treated areas while mirroring the continual decrease apparent in untreated areas. I think this chart does exactly that; the blue line reaches up and stays up, and the line charting the untreated area populations doesn’t just stay the same but has a decrease. That decrease is important, as it shows how insect populations would continue to decrease with no intervention. The treated areas showed an immediate 80% increase in insects and then it stayed consistent in that 80-100% difference from the starting point. That leads me to believe that this population level is the ‘norm’ for an area that is nicely hospitable for them. I chose the  % difference from the first measurements as the variable for this chart because I wanted to highlight change. The raw totals also show similar line trajectories, but I thought that the % gets more straight to the point of the story I want to depict.

The third visualization that I put together was a bit more specific where I tried to find any preference for a log versus non-log environment. This is referring to where the insects were found and more generally denotes their preference for a woody, enclosed habitat. I split the preferences up by adult and nymph because the stage of life may be an important indicator of habitat inclination. I figured that pie charts may be useful in succinctly illustrating the proportions. The overall story here is that there is no preference; it is actually surprisingly even. Although, the lack of preference may tell its own story which is that the overall big-picture landscape is what makes the difference for insects, their ecosystem, and their ability to survive and reproduce. 

I started off with all three charts using green and brown to represent things even though there was no common variable throughout the three, which came off as confusing and not properly distinguishing that each chart represents new information. I changed the colors to each have their own meaning, but I think color can play a better role in this grouping of charts overall. I want to improve the storytelling aspect of these visualizations and I think there is a lot of potential there. The big point here is to compare treated to untreated land and spotlight all of the subsequent changes. The generalizable information that I gleaned from the bar chart is not super helpful toward that end, even if it may be interesting on its own.

My next steps are to tell the story more articulately by comparing the treated and control groups all the way down through various visualizations. The important points there are the insect populations, and the ages and sexes data may be telling of the propensity for reproduction and further population growth. The data includes the various collection sites, so breaking it down by treated vs untreated per collection site could be insightful for a more precise comparison as well. Within a larger project I may want to find similar data for other lands of varying climates, as this is situated in one forested area of the Jemez mountains so the conclusions may be isolated to there.