Visualizing proximity of non-native species to protected areas of the United States—A proximity visualization tool for BISON

The Proximity Visualization Tool is a simple lightweight tool that can be placed on web pages that allows users to identify non-native species near Department of Interior lands. The tool works by accessing the more than 400 million species occurrence records in the Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) database using the BISON Application Programming Interface (API). The tool sends user-defined spatial and species selections to the BISON API, and the BISON API returns instances of non-native species near protected areas (U.S. Geological Survey Gap Analysis Project, 2018) within the selected spatial boundary. The tool is available from the BISON Examples page (htt ps://bison .usgs.gov/ examples.html). EXPLANATION