As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations during 2020, the National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust) is highlighting the 20 most popular datasets on the NBN Atlas. Rather than being swayed by subjectivity, this “top 20” is an objective measure of the most downloaded wildlife datasets – taking into account the length of time the dataset has been on the NBN Atlas.
So, these are the 20 datasets that you have found interesting enough to download most frequently either for your work or for your personal use.
During the NBN Trust’s 20th anniversary year we are looking at these “top 20” favourite NBN Atlas wildlife datasets in turn.
The datasets
Here are another two NBN Atlas datasets from the ‘top 20’ most downloaded:
Non-avian taxa (BTO and partners)
We continue with the 1,730,509 records of non-avian taxa from the BTO and partners.
These UK-wide records of non-bird species have been submitted by contributors to surveys run by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) over many years, often in collaboration with other partner organisations. The largest numbers of records relate to mammals from Garden?Birdwatch and dragonflies from BirdTrack, with smaller numbers of records from a range of other surveys including the Non-Estuarine Waterbird?Survey?(NEWS).?Records have been converted to standard biological records and have been deduplicated.
These 1,730,509 records comprise 146 species – the most frequently recorded include: the Grey Squirrel, the Common Frog and the Small White Butterfly. The records cover 97 genera and 44 families.
This dataset has been downloaded?9,570 times, enabling the sharing of 163,027,350 records.
The three most common reasons for downloading this dataset are:? ‘Education’ (2,529 times), ‘Ecological research’ (704 times) and ‘Scientific research‘ (650 times).
Why not take a look at this dataset from the BTO and partners yourself?
Mammal records from Britain from the Atlas of Mammals (1993), with some subsequent records
Another of the “top 20” most downloaded datasets are the 133,650 mammal records from the Atlas of Mammals in Britain (1993), with some subsequent records.
This dataset consists largely of Biological Records Centre (BRC) mammal data used to create the 1993 ‘Atlas of mammals in Britain’. The data were collected by volunteers from the former Mammal Recording Scheme. Recording cards from the dataset were converted to electronic format at the BRC. The records cover England, Scotland and Wales – there are no records for Northern Ireland.
These 133,650 records span 64 species – the most counted include: the European Mole, the European Rabbit and the European Hedgehog. The records cover 47 genera and 19 families.
This dataset has been downloaded 12,921 times, allowing the sharing of 11,263,715 records.
The three most common reasons for downloading this dataset are:? ‘Education’ (2,513 times), ‘Commercial’ (967 times) and ‘Ecological research’ (941 times).
Why not take a look at this dataset of mammal records from the BRC yourself?
Read about the other Top 20 datasets