Information graphics + science = Communication

For my current job, I’m mostly a writer, sometimes a graphics designer and occasional photographer. I don’t get many opportunities these days to create information graphics, so it’s always a treat when I get to help one of our scientists communicate through visual information.

Here’s a chart that a colleague made and used many times to illustrate the relationship between rainfall anomalies (an anomaly is the difference from the average) and occurrence of peatland fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

My main issue with the chart is the confusing double axis and the overuse of loud colors. The eye is constantly forced to consult the legend to figure out what is being shown. The point we want to make with this graphic is: drier-than-normal years have an influence on fire activity. With this in mind, I made this version:

We’ve helped this chart out heaps just by teasing apart the two data sets onto separate axes. Alternating vertical bands help the eye follow the data across different years. And to really hit the point home, I added the circles and dark text.

I also tinkered on the wonderful Many Eyes site to show the data in a slightly different configuration:

This scatter plot shows the hotspot densities as circles of different sizes, which enables one to see immediately that most of the larger circles are tied to negative (drier) rainfall anomalies. If I could customize the chart further, I’d fiddle with the y-axis and change the awful intervals (where’s the zero line?)

What do you think?