As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations during 2020, the National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust) was highlighting the 20 most popular datasets on the NBN Atlas. Rather than being swayed by subjectivity, this “top 20” was an objective measure of the most downloaded wildlife datasets – taking into account the length of time the dataset had 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.
As the NBN Trust’s 20th anniversary year has come to a close, we are looking at the remaining “top 20” favourite NBN Atlas wildlife datasets in turn.
The datasets
Here are another four NBN Atlas datasets from the ‘top 20’ most downloaded:
Suffolk Biodiversity Information Service (SBIS) Dataset
We continue with the 2,572,900 records from the Suffolk Biodiversity Information Service (SBIS) Dataset.
They are records of observations made within the county boundary of Suffolk – the all species records from the SBIS Recorder Database. They have all been passed through SBRC validation procedures, though they have not been checked by NBN Record Cleaner.
These 2,572,900 records consist of 13,885 species – the most frequently recorded include: the large white butterfly (20,186), the small white butterfly (18,705) and the peacock butterfly (16,996). The records cover 5,747 genera and 1000 families.
This dataset has been downloaded?20,046 times, enabling the sharing of 24,701,760 records.
The three most common reasons for downloading this dataset are:?’Education’ (4,543 times), ‘Environmental assessment’ (1,775 times) and ‘Ecological research’ (1,502 times).
Why not take a look at this dataset from Suffolk Biodiversity Information Service yourself?
Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service (NBIS) Records to December 2016
The 1,714,863 records to December 2016 from Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service (NBIS) are another of the “top 20” most downloaded datasets.
They cover the administrative boundary of Norfolk including the marine environment. The records are a mixture of casual records and site surveys provided by members of the public, professional ecologists and members of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society. They have been verified by the network of Norfolk County Recorders unless the records have come from another expert source.
These 1,714,863 records cover 14,244 species – the most frequently recorded being the large yellow underwing moth (13,836), followed by the setaceous Hebrew character moth (10,671) and the flame shoulder moth (10,470). The records cover 5,792 genera and 1,295 families.
This dataset has been downloaded?21,004 times, enabling the sharing of 32,766,599 records.
The three most common reasons for downloading this dataset are:?’Education’ (4,584 times), ‘Environmental assessment’ (1,743 times) and ‘Ecological research’ (1,466 times).
Why not take a look at this dataset from Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service yourself?
Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR) Online Recording
Another of the “top 20” most downloaded datasets are the 106,822 records from Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR) Online Recording.
These records have been collated through the CEDaR Online Recording forms. The records have been contributed by a number of individuals, for several species groups and have been verified through a network of local and national experts using iRecord.
Most of the records are from Northern Ireland and are recent (post-2012) additions – though there are some older datasets included that have been uploaded for verification purposes in recent years.
These 106,822 records comprise 4,003 species – the most frequently recorded include: the red squirrel (3,097), the grey squirrel (1,906), large yellow underwing moth (1,595) and the common buzzard (1,225). The records cover 2,396 genera and 853 families.
Downloaded?5,290 times, this has allowed 1,316,493 records to be shared from this dataset.
The three most common reasons for downloading this dataset are:?’Education’ (2,030 times), ‘Professional research’ (691 times) and ‘Environmental assessment (533 times).
Why not take a look at this dataset from CEDaR Online Recording yourself?
Record Pool
The 30,922 records from Record Pool are another of the “top 20” most downloaded datasets from the NBN Atlas.
These records come from Record Pool, an online recording tool, which collects information on reptiles and amphibians in the UK and makes it available, locally and nationally, for conservation purposes. The Record Pool is a collaboration between Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) and Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK (ARG UK), and aims to capture data that would otherwise be lost to the conservation community.
The records in this dataset include opportunistic visual records, structured surveys using visual means, trapping, netting, artificial cover objects and eDNA.
These 30,922 records cover 25 species – the most frequently recorded include: slow worms (5,479), common lizards (4,284), the common frog (4,055) and the common adder (3,498). The records cover 19 genera and 10 families.
This dataset has been downloaded?2,321 times, enabling the sharing of 1,259,503 records.
The three most common reasons for downloading this dataset are:?’Education’ (794 times), ‘Commercial’ (285 times) and ‘by the public for personal use’ (249 times).
Why not take a look at this dataset from Record Pool yourself?