Sounds of the Wild West

Yesterday Esri announced a number of new features available in ArcGIS Story Maps. These new features include a swipe control (to swipe between two different map views), new embed tools for sharing your Story Maps and more basemap options. Maybe because I've been trapped in inner-city London for the last three months during lockdown I particularly like the new audio tools. These make it much easier for developers to add audio clips to their Story Maps.

You can see (or listen) to Esri Story Maps' new audio feature in action on Sounds of the Wild West. This audio tour of Montana is broken into four sections, exploring the sounds of each of Montana’s four major ecosystems: Greater Yellowstone, the Crown of the Continent, the High Plains and Upper Missouri.

In each section you can listen to a selection of environmental and animal sounds. In Yellowstone you can listen to the sounds of geysers, bears and wolves. In the Crown of the Continent you can listen to the wind whistling through the Rockies, black bears and mule deer. In the High Plains you can hear the song of the meadowlark, the chirping of the prairie dog and the howl of the coyote. In the Upper Missouri ecosystem you can listen to the gurgling of the Missouri River, the croak of the Boreal chorus frog and the song of the red-winged blackbird.

If you want some inspiration for creating your own audio tours with the new Story Maps features then you should have a look at the Maps Mania Sound Maps tag, which includes many examples of maps which feature audio and sound clips.