About
Wild Orchard Atlas – Simcoe County
Wild Orchard Atlas is an open-source web mapping application designed to geolocate, document, and visualize wild fruit trees across Simcoe County. The platform enables users to contribute observations of fruit-bearing trees—such as apples, pears, plums, and other edible wild species—by tagging precise locations, uploading photos, and adding seasonal and condition data.
Built with modern web mapping technologies (such as Leaflet and GeoJSON), the application provides an interactive map interface where the community can explore existing tree locations, filter by species or fruit type, and track seasonal availability. Each entry acts as a living data point, contributing to a growing ecological and foraging knowledge base.
The project aims to support local food awareness, ecological mapping, and community-driven environmental documentation. By combining citizen science with open data principles, Wild Orchard Atlas creates a shared resource that highlights the hidden edible landscape of Simcoe County while encouraging sustainable foraging and conservation awareness.
Core features include:
- Interactive map of wild fruit tree locations
- User-submitted geotagged entries with photos and descriptions
- Species and fruit-type categorization
- Seasonal status tracking (flowering, fruiting, dormant)
- Open dataset export (GeoJSON) for research and reuse
- GitHub-based open-source contribution model
Wild Orchard Atlas is intended to grow as a collaborative, evolving map of natural food resources, connecting people more directly to the landscapes they live in.