Biodiversity in National Parks

Data Science Notebook using U.S. National Park Service data.
Author: E. J. Kluge, 2020, ekluge@ikp.uni-koeln.de

Intro

Due to deforestation, mono agricultures, overhunting or other human disturbances, the natural habitats of flora and fauna are ever shrinking. Thus, multiple species got endangered over the years, finding a habitat only in the protected and confined national parks of their countries. Some species are so severely endangered, they can only to be found in the zoo [1], [2].
The purpose of this project is to investigate the state of the remaining flora and fauna, its diversity and to find specie categories or types that became endangered.

Methodology

For that matter, the bio diversity

• overall,
• per species category (i.e. mammals, reptiles, fish etc.) and
• per national park

is investigated.
Also, the conservation state per species category is investigated.
Since the available data originates form the U.S. National Park Service [3], the investigation is confined to the U.S. only.

Summary & Conclusions

In the investigated habitats, flora live is four times more abundant than fauna. Within the flora category, nine out of ten plants are vascular. Within the animal realm, birds make out half the population, mammals a fifth and the remaining one third is almost evenly divided between the fish, amphibians and reptiles.
Independent of their geographical size, the Bryce national park contains the fewest individuals, while the Yellowstone national park inhabits the most individual beings. In dependence of their U.S. location and provided environment, naturally, the inner-species abundance vary. However, for the investigated category excerpt, the variations in magnitude are smaller than initially expected and no specific fluctuation stands out.
The investigation shows, that mammals are the most threatened, followed by the fish and then birds. Plant species are mostly out of concern.
Finally, the investigated data set reveals a bimodal correlation between plant species observation frequencies and animal species observation frequencies, showing a functional of the food chain and suggesting a symbiosis between plants and animals.

Suggested Proceeding

To fully reflect the actual state of biodiversity on a global scale, data from different countries and more national parks per country could be investigated. By comparing the biodiversity and conservation states by countries, possible patterns or correlations might be found that remain hidden otherwise.

Setup

Library imports

Settings and Parameters

Data info and processing

Observation data from NPS

Observation Data Categories: SCIENTIFIC_NAME, PARK_NAME, OBSERVATIONS

Table 1: Observation Data Types

	data type
scientific_name	category
park_name	category
observations	int64

Table 2: Observation Data Excerpt

	scientific_name	park_name	observations
0	Vicia benghalensis	Great Smoky Mountains	68
1	Neovison vison	Great Smoky Mountains	77
2	Prunus subcordata	Yosemite	138
3	Abutilon theophrasti	Bryce	84
4	Githopsis specularioides	Great Smoky Mountains	85
...	...	...	...
23291	Croton monanthogynus	Yosemite	173
23292	Otospermophilus beecheyi	Bryce	130
23293	Heterotheca sessiliflora ssp. echioides	Bryce	140
23294	Dicranella rufescens	Yosemite	171
23295	Cucurbita pepo	Yosemite	164

23296 rows × 3 columns

Observation Data Length: 23296 species

Species Info Data from NPS

Species Data Categories: TYPE, CATEGORY, SCIENTIFIC_NAME, COMMON_NAMES, CONSERVATION

Table 3: Species Data Types

	data type
type	category
category	category
scientific_name	category
common_names	object
conservation	category

Table 4: Species Data Excerpt

	type	category	scientific_name	common_names	conservation
0	Animal	Mammal	Clethrionomys gapperi gapperi	Gapper's Red-Backed Vole	Unknown
1	Animal	Mammal	Bos bison	American Bison, Bison	Unknown
2	Animal	Mammal	Bos taurus	Aurochs, Aurochs, Domestic Cattle (Feral), Dom...	Unknown
3	Animal	Mammal	Ovis aries	Domestic Sheep, Mouflon, Red Sheep, Sheep (Feral)	Unknown
4	Animal	Mammal	Cervus elaphus	Wapiti Or Elk	Unknown
...	...	...	...	...	...
5819	Plant	Vascular Plant	Solanum parishii	Parish's Nightshade	Unknown
5820	Plant	Vascular Plant	Solanum xanti	Chaparral Nightshade, Purple Nightshade	Unknown
5821	Plant	Vascular Plant	Parthenocissus vitacea	Thicket Creeper, Virginia Creeper, Woodbine	Unknown
5822	Plant	Vascular Plant	Vitis californica	California Grape, California Wild Grape	Unknown
5823	Plant	Vascular Plant	Tribulus terrestris	Bullhead, Caltrop, Goathead, Mexican Sandbur, ...	Unknown

5541 rows × 5 columns

Species Data Length: 23296 species

Merged data

Table 5: Merged tables with summed observations

	type	category	scientific_name	conservation	observations
0	Animal	Mammal	Clethrionomys gapperi gapperi	Unknown	615
1	Animal	Mammal	Bos bison	Unknown	542
2	Animal	Mammal	Bos taurus	Unknown	514
3	Animal	Mammal	Ovis aries	Unknown	542
4	Animal	Mammal	Cervus elaphus	Unknown	1218
...	...	...	...	...	...
5536	Plant	Vascular Plant	Solanum parishii	Unknown	574
5537	Plant	Vascular Plant	Solanum xanti	Unknown	575
5538	Plant	Vascular Plant	Parthenocissus vitacea	Unknown	583
5539	Plant	Vascular Plant	Vitis californica	Unknown	562
5540	Plant	Vascular Plant	Tribulus terrestris	Unknown	556

5541 rows × 5 columns

Table 6: Merged tables with summed observations (encoded)

	type	category	conservation	observations
scientific_name
Clethrionomys gapperi gapperi	0	3	0	615
Bos bison	0	3	0	542
Bos taurus	0	3	0	514
Ovis aries	0	3	0	542
Cervus elaphus	0	3	0	1218
...	...	...	...	...
Solanum parishii	1	6	0	574
Solanum xanti	1	6	0	575
Parthenocissus vitacea	1	6	0	583
Vitis californica	1	6	0	562
Tribulus terrestris	1	6	0	556

5541 rows × 4 columns

Categorical Encoding Map:

{'type': {'Animal': 0, 'Plant': 1}, 'category': {'Mammal': 3, 'Bird': 4, 'Reptile': 0, 'Amphibian': 1, 'Fish': 2, 'Vascular Plant': 6, 'Nonvascular Plant': 5}, 'conservation': {'Unknown': 0, 'Species of Concern': 1, 'Endangered': 4, 'Threatened': 3, 'In Recovery': 2}}

Data Analysis (EDA)

Biodiversity Overall

Species Types: Animal, Plant

Species Categories: Mammal, Bird, Reptile, Amphibian, Fish, Vascular Plant, Nonvascular Plant

Table 7: Number of Species per Category

	category	species_count
0	Vascular Plant	4262
1	Bird	488
2	Nonvascular Plant	333
3	Mammal	176
4	Fish	125
5	Amphibian	79
6	Reptile	78

Figure 1: Biodiversity per Category

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Figure Analysis

The pie charts show, that flora live is four times more abundant than fauna live (right pie).
Within the flora realm, almost nine out of ten are vascular plants (center pie).
Within the animal realm, birds make out 50% of the population, mammals about 20% and the remaining 30% is almost evenly divided between the fish, amphibians and reptiles.

Biodiversity per National Park

National Parks: Great Smoky Mountains, Yosemite, Bryce, Yellowstone

Table 8: Observed Spiecies per National Park

	sum
park_name	Bryce	Great Smoky Mountains	Yellowstone	Yosemite	Total Count
scientific_name
Abies bifolia	109	72	215	136	532
Abies concolor	83	101	241	205	630
Abies fraseri	109	81	218	110	518
Abietinella abietina	101	65	243	183	592
Abronia ammophila	92	72	222	137	523
...	...	...	...	...	...
Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha	73	123	227	135	558
Zonotrichia querula	105	83	268	160	616
Zygodon viridissimus	100	71	270	159	600
Zygodon viridissimus var. rupestris	102	102	237	210	651
Total Count	576025	431820	1443562	863332	3314739

5542 rows × 5 columns

Figure 1: Observed Individuals per National Park

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Figure Analysis

Independent of their provided land size, the Bryce national park contains the fewest individuals, while the Yellowstone national park inhabits the most beings.

Figure 2: Reptile Species Distribution per Park:

Figure 3: Amphibian Species Distribution per Park:

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Figure 4: Mammal Species Distribution per Park:

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Figure 5: Bird Species Distribution per Park:

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Figure Analysis

In dependence of the provided environment, naturally, when divided into categories, the inner-species abundance vary. However, there is no magnitude fluctuation, that stands out.

Species Conservation states

Species Conservation Categories: Unknown, Species of Concern, Endangered, Threatened, In Recovery

Table 9: Species Conservation State

	conservation	threat_level	species count
0	Endangered	4	15.0
6	Threatened	3	9.0
12	In Recovery	2	3.0
18	Species of Concern	1	151.0
24	Unknown	0	5363.0

Note: Here, the threat level" respectively, is the orderly encode of "conservation". The order is based on the "IUCN Red List of Threatened Species".

Table 10: Spiecies Conservation states overview

		max
	conservation	Unknown	Species of Concern	In Recovery	Threatened	Endangered	Threat Level
category	scientific_name
Reptile	Agkistrodon contortrix mokasen	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Anolis carolinensis carolinensis	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Apalone spinifera spinifera	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Aspidoscelis tigris munda	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Carphophis	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
Vascular Plant	Zigadenus venenosus var. venenosus	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Zizia aptera	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Zizia aurea	0.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	0
	Zizia trifoliata	NaN	1.0	NaN	NaN	NaN	1
Threat Level		0.0	1.0	2.0	3.0	4.0	4

5542 rows × 6 columns

Figure 6: Species Observations per Category over Conservation Status

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Figure Analysis

The above figures show, that the conservation state for reptiles and non-vascular plants is healthy at the moment. However, to discearn the status by numbers and not visuals, a correlation investigation has been done and statistics were calculated:

Correlation investigation

Table 11: Correlations

	observations	type	category	conservation
observations	1.000000	0.081908	0.156756	-0.415458
type	0.081908	1.000000	0.922266	-0.507811
category	0.156756	0.922266	1.000000	-0.550609
conservation	-0.415458	-0.507811	-0.550609	1.000000

Table Analysis

While "species type to species category" and "observation to conservation" correlate by design, possible correlations exist for:

• species category and conservation and/or
• species type and conservation.

Table 12: Medians (unencoded)

	type	category	conservation	observations
0	Plant	Vascular Plant	Unknown	575
1	Animal	Bird	Species of Concern	515
2	Animal	Bird	In Recovery	465
3	Animal	Fish	Threatened	278
4	Animal	Mammal	Endangered	146

Figure 7: Spiecies Category over Threat Level

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Figure Analysis

The above figure shows, that mammals are most threatened, then fish and finally the birds. Plant species are mostly out of concern.

	category	threat_percent
4	Fish	4.8
0	Mammal	4.5
3	Amphibian	3.8
1	Bird	0.8
5	Vascular Plant	0.1
2	Reptile	0.0
6	Nonvascular Plant	0.0

Additional investigation

Figure 8: Species Count Frequencies

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Figure Analysis

The congruence of plant and animal species observations frequency is striking. Both are bimodal with matching peaks at about 580 and 1150 observations. This correlation of plant and animal spieces occurences is probably highlighting the symbiosis of plants and animals and the food chain.

References

1. Wikipedia, "Conservation status", 2021, Website
2. IUCN, "Red List of Threatened Species", 2021, Website

Data Sources

• U.S. National Park Service (NPS): Tools and Data