In week 2, we began talking about tools (and best practices) to visualize time.  The hosted version of Timeline.js was a low friction way for students to start working through the process of building a temporal visualization – crafting a narrative, collecting data, etc.  It was also a way to introduce students to the process of scraping data (in this case from Wikipedia) as the source for their visualization. For the full guidelines to this project challenge, refer to the Week 2 schedule.

UNESCO Heritage Sites in the United States and Southeast Asia

by Celeste A-Re, Cindy Nguyen, and Rachel Yales

This timeline compares the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites of the United States and Southeast Asia by date of inscription to the World Heritage List.

UNESCO designates these locations as sites of physical or cultural significance and protects World Heritage sites under the Law of War, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and international law. The World Heritage Committee can also officially designate sites as ‘endangered’, such as the Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra (Indonesia), Angkor (Cambodia), and Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. In this way designations as World Heritage sites can help to protect and raise awareness to cultural and natural wonders.

This timeline demonstrates that Heritage Sites in Southeast Asia were titled much later than those in the United States; the first sites officiated were not until 1991 with the Borobudur Temple Complex (Indonesia), Historic city of Ayutthaya (Thailand), and Historic Town of Sukhotai (Thailand). Most of the United States sites are also listed as National Parks while the majority of the sites in Southeast Asia are historic architectural wonders. With the rise in global tourism, heritage site designations bring additional revenue and media attention to countries.

Peruvian and Mexican World Heritage Sites

by Flora Feltham, Jared Bidlow, and Cynthia Vagnetti

Peruvian and Mexican World Heritage Sites is an interactive timeline comparing each countries’ World Heritage Sites, landscapes both humanly shaped and of naturally arising phenomena. Considering that the cultural heritage and the natural heritage are increasingly threatened with destruction and are of outstanding interest to mankind as a whole, unique volunteer programs are surfacing across the globe. The objective of this project is to increase public awareness-building activities addressing the protection and preservation of world cultural heritage sites. This timeline will be of interest to the general public of all ages and potentially encourage countries to sign the World Heritage Convention, whereby the protection of their natural and cultural heritage is ensured.

Conservation Canada

by Rikki Valkema, Mel Walker, Taz Karim

The “Conservation Canada” timeline is temporal representation of some of Canada’s conservation efforts from the late 1800’s until present. We created this timeline using data from Wikipedia on Canada’s cultural heritage sites as well as data on their national parks. As you scroll through the timeline, you will notice that some sites are both parks and heritage sites. To us, this demonstrates that culture significance extends beyond man-made structures and those places are truly important to the people of Canada. One of the qualifying criteria of becoming a natural world cultural heritage site is that it “is an outstanding example representing major stages of Earth’s history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features” As you will see in the timeline, several of Canada’s National Parks such as Dinosaur Provincial Park, which contain fossils or other geological features making them an ideal area for both cultural and natural conservation. Another qualifying criteria is that a site that “contains the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation”. Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park is the second largest national park in the world and preserves the largest herd of free roaming wood Bison. It is also the only known nesting site of Whooping Cranes. We hope you enjoy scrolling through the timeline and gain an appreciation of Canada’s impressive conservation efforts.