Ecology of Place

The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s new interactive kiosk, Ecology of Place, explores the ways in which human settlements and nature interconnect. Visitors can explore content across four different maps, and each one depicts a view of New Bedford with themed information layered across it. The map themes are Watershed & Geology, Ecology, Sea Level Rise, and Population. 

On the Watershed & Geology map, visitors can use sliders to compare the geology of the land and how that impacts and creates watershed areas. On the Ecology map, visitors see images of native plants and animals spread across the area. They can tap on an image to open a pop-up and read more about the plant or animal. The Sea Level Rise map enables visitors to use a slider to compare the current sea level to the projected sea level in 2130. The population map allows visitors to learn what the population was in the area from the 1650 all the way up to the present. They can see where people have gathered and how and why that might have changed over time. Additionally, this interactive map is explorable by NavPad, making the kiosk more accessible to visitors with limited mobility or vision.