Divide a site into habitat polygons that meet exactly, zone a protected area and lay out survey plots, all on one web map.
vectorstream is a geometry editor for web maps that stores the border between neighbouring polygons once. Conservation and environmental teams use it for habitat maps, protected-area zoning and restoration planning: when a habitat boundary is corrected after a survey, the adjoining habitat changes with it. Survey plots, transects and site notes are drawn on the same map, and everything exports as GeoJSON.
Use cases
A habitat map assigns every part of a site to a class: woodland, grassland, wetland, scrub. The polygons cover the site, and a survey that moves one boundary changes two habitats at once.
Some protected areas are zoned into a core, a buffer and a transition area. The zones share borders, and a review of the management plan can shift any of them.
Restoration projects mark treatment areas, and monitoring needs fixed plots and transects. Rectangles and circles cover standard plots, and lines cover transects.
Why topology
If each habitat is drawn as its own shape, the land between two of them ends up unclassified or counted twice. Shared borders keep neighbouring habitats flush as boundaries are corrected over the years.
A field survey usually corrects a few boundaries, not the whole map. Moving one shared edge updates the two habitats it separates, and undo restores the previous version exactly.
Monitoring data must still be readable years later. GeoJSON is an open, text-based format, and vectorstream both imports it with a geometry check and exports it.
How it works
Load existing habitat polygons and site boundaries as GeoJSON.
Correct boundaries, split polygons for new habitats and merge where classes combine.
Draw survey plots, transects and sample points on the same map.
Export habitats, zones and the survey design as GeoJSON for reports and long-term records.
FAQ
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