Using GBIF for biodiversity and biosecurity management.
Potential for regional councils to use GBIF to access and share species occurrence data for biodiversity and biosecurity management
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network established to provide open access to biodiversity data from around the world.
GBIF provides a data infrastructure that is networked internationally and aims to ensure ‘the best possible biodiversity data underpins research, policy and decisions’.
Aotearoa New Zealand has been a participant in GBIF since 2001 but has only recently established a web portal (www.gbif.org.nz) and a hosted-IPT instance to assist New Zealand-based data holders (www.ipt.gbif.org.nz).
Using an Envirolink Advice Grant, ORC Senior Scientist Dr Scott Jarvie on behalf of Te Uru Kahika (Regional and Unitary Councils Aotearoa) approached Dr Aaron Wilton from Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research (MWLR) to investigate the feasibility of GBIF to mobilise species occurrence data to inform biodiversity and biosecurity management.
Across Aotearoa New Zealand, councils were found to collect extensive biodiversity and biosecurity species occurrence data. Exemplar datasets were provided by regional council staff to assess for compatibility with GBIF and the requisite data standards. All the data sets were found to be compatible with the data standards utilised by GBIF and would be appropriate to be published to GBIF.
A survey of regional council staff identified several frequently encountered difficulties for these staff associated with species occurrence data. These included issues associated with the discovery and accessing of existing data, and reformatting and integrating data sets, through to sharing data sets with other parties. Nearly all these difficulties could be addressed by integrating GBIF with regional council information systems or processes.
The key recommendation from the report was that regional councils should adopt GBIF as a primary means of preparing, sharing, and accessing publicly available species occurrence data. Following on from submission of the report, the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) has funded a pilot project for local government to build capability and experience with uploading data to GBIF.
The councils will document their experiences and share valuable insights in short reports and a webinar, making it easier for other councils to follow suit with similar data types.
None of this would have been possible without the support on an Envirolink Grant.
Last modified: