Tabulation, or more accurately, cross-tabulation is the direct counterpart of scatterplots for layers that have class rather than numeric values. In the case of tabulation, the X and Y axes of a table are equivalent to the X and Y axes of a scatterplot.  

Tabulations define the intersection of areas, for example a table of Australian States and Territories with the reserve classes (CAPAD) such as National Parks, Forestry reserves, flora reserve etc. So what are in the ‘cells’ within the table? We provide three options – the area (square kilometres), number of species (richness) or number of occurrence records.

Using tabulation, you can therefore do some amazing analyses. You could for example see how well a species (or genus or species group etc) are represented across States and Territories, reserve types, bioregions etc. You can download the table as a CSV-formatted file to analyse as you wish. As we build the number of contextual layers (layers with class values), more combinations are made available. The tabulation tables are built each month to reflect updated occurrence record data. This IS surely powerful stuff?

More information can be found in the Tabulation case study.