SpatialSurveyor: Ground-Level 360° Panorama Transects as Ecological Survey Instruments

@techreport{cnl2026spatialsurveyor, author = {}, title = {SpatialSurveyor: Ground-Level 360° Panorama Transects as Ecological Survey Instruments}, institution = {Canemah Nature Laboratory}, year = {2026}, number = {CNL-TN-2026-036}, month = {march}, url = {https://canemah.org/archive/document.php?id=CNL-TN-2026-036}, abstract = {Ground-level 360° panorama imagery is emerging as a tool for ecological field survey, but its integration with geospatial classification products and biodiversity databases remains undeveloped. This note describes SpatialSurvey, a browser-based prototype that combines systematic georeferenced panorama transects with satellite land cover classification overlays, property boundary analysis, and citizen science biodiversity data to enable direct visual comparison between what remote sensing classifies and what the ground reveals. A proof-of-concept deployment at the Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center (UC Natural Reserve System, ~88 acres) captured 96 equirectangular panoramas at 72 megapixels along a 1,536-meter transect in 44 minutes, traversing creosote-bursage bajada, mesquite bosque, desert wash, hillslope, and developed facilities. The resulting dataset exposes at least five distinct habitat structures within a property that the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) classifies as a single land cover type and that LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Type (EVT) resolves into only three to four classes with spatially suspect boundaries. The prototype implements progressive multiresolution tile-based panorama loading for sub-second viewer access and is positioned as a springboard toward spatial analysis instruments within the YEA Labs Macroscope ecological informatics platform.} }