The Beautiful Burial Ground (BBG) Project team has been sharing knowledge about the built, natural and social heritage of burial grounds since 2018. The project will finish in late 2022. The activities on the biodiversity side have involved encouraging wildlife recording in burial grounds, submitting records, and making those records accessible to the general public, recorders and those managing these special places. The project has developed a Beautiful Burial Grounds Portal within the NBN Atlas (National Biodiversity Network Atlas) which is pioneering the use of the NBN Atlas for a specific project.

With fabulous partners and recorders the project has delivered over 150 training activities for over 2000 volunteers. There have been many sessions specific for people with disability needs such as those with mobility, vision or hearing impairments. Now more people can enjoy identifying wildlife and submitting records to the national database, the NBN Atlas, which everyone can access. The BBG Project has also encouraged groups to run their own recording activities – for example during the last three years of Love Your Burial Ground week over 800 events were organised – ranging from small bug hunts with local school in churchyards to BioBlitz’s in large cemeteries.

As part of Churches Count on Nature 2022, we encouraged a portion of the recording community to engage with our project on iNaturalistUK. iNaturalist can help with species identification, the process is relatively user-friendly and you can get all the work done out in the field rather than typing up at home afterwards.

The initiative has been a tremendous success with almost 3,000 records made, of 834 Species, by 91 different people contributing so far. The project on iNaturalistUK is permanent and the BBG Project welcome records all year round.

You need to join the ‘Beautiful Burial Grounds’ project before submitting records and all of this can be done within the iNaturalist app. The BBG Project team created a short video to demonstrate the steps required for anyone new to the platform.

Since the start of the BBG project we have been making use of iRecord. iRecord is an excellent initiative which we continue to use in conjunction with iNaturalist. iRecord suits our need for submitting longer lists of records. The ultimate destination for records submitting on both of these platforms is the NBN Atlas, and can be viewed on our Burial Grounds Portal. Further information and links to our different recording options can be found here.

Below is a map of the Churches Count on Nature records submitted via the project on iNaturalistUK.

With thanks to all our partners who made our project possible. To name but a few – Church of England, Church in Wales, NBN Trust, iNaturalistUK, iRecord, and the Heritage Lottery.

The post The Beautiful Burial Grounds Portal and gathering records appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.

I live in north Hampshire, in a Parish that is rich in biodiversity when compared to many other areas of southern England: some 20% of its land area is designated SSSI, with semi-natural ancient woodland SINC sites adding to its appeal. So I was surprised when a recent development application, set to encroach on one of the SINC sites, cited county records as demonstrating there were no protected species within 1km of the proposed development. This included Hazel Dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius, a species that I knew from anecdotal accounts and personal observations to be present in Pamber Forest, a nearby nature reserve. I checked the county records and sure enough they had no records for Dormice nearby. However, National Biodiversity Network came to the rescue as their database contained Dormouse records submitted by People’s Trust for Endangered Species. Thanks to NBN the local planning authority was made aware that this protected species was indeed present within the prescribed radius of the desk-bound ‘survey’ undertaken by environmental consultants on behalf of the developer. I like to think that this contributed to the decision by the planning officer to refuse the application, and its subsequent refusal when taken to appeal.

Data is an increasingly powerful tool in the battle for native biodiversity and for me this case highlights two things. Firstly the need for sightings and records to be submitted to the NBN and its conservation partners. And secondly, how essential it is for conservation bodies and recording schemes to work together rather than as separate entities. Synergy is the name of the game. 

Nature Photographers Limited is kindly sponsoring prizes for the 2018 UK Awards for Biological Recording and Information Sharing.

The post Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.

Written by Jo Muse, Principal Policy Officer, Scottish Environment Protection Agency

“Our ability to do great things with data will make a real difference in every aspect of our lives.” – Jennifer Pahlka, Founder and Executive Director for Code for America

Many organisations collect and use data to perform their daily tasks. Often that data is used only once, for the specific task it was collected for and then hidden away within the deepest darkest depths of the filing system to never again see the light of day.  That data can however be extremely useful to other data users, out with the task for which it was originally collected and often, out with the organisation that collected it. These wider users can take open data and use it in innovative ways to gain new insights and trends that can increase our understanding of the environmental challenges that need to be addressed, help to prioritise and inform decisions, and initiate positive action.

We have a responsibility to society, the economy and the environment to open up more data – to help target policy and decisions on the most important issues, to be more transparent to the public, encourage participation, and support innovation within a sustainable economy.

Open data is the release of non-commercially sensitive and non-personal public sector information. Open data does not contain personal information relating to individuals or information which could be used to identify individuals. (Open data strategy, Scottish Government, 2015). Open data is data that anyone can access, use or share. It should be shared in a standardised format so that it is easy to use and understand, and easily tracked back to where it came from. (Open Data Institute).

Since the publication of the Scottish Government open data strategy, more and more data has been openly published across the public sector. With portals such as the Scottish Spatial Data Infrastructure (SSDI) Metadata Portal and data.gov.uk – it is much easier to find and discover open data.  But more data doesn’t always mean more information…..

Unlocking information from data

Environmental data underpins so many different activities – carrying out assessments; applying for grants and permits; making decisions on environmental impacts; carrying out research; learning at school about statistics, science, and geography; and understanding more about the very environment in which we live and work.  We all have questions we want to answer, and with the right data that is accessible in the right format, we can retrieve those key nuggets of information that help us reach the right answers.  So it is important to have access to data that is trusted and authoritative, relevant to the big questions, is current and up-to-date, and available in a useful format.

“Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily.” Tim Berners-Lee

Since its inception in 2011, Scotland’s environment website has been developed as a consumer of open data, transforming it into accessible and understandable information. Embracing the concept of a Shared Environment Information System (SEIS), a high proportion of data tools and services on Scotland’s environment website rely on live open data services published by our partners, that make a wide range of environmental data more accessible to multiple users and uses, and reduces the risk of different versions of data being  used.  Users can therefore be confident they are viewing the most up-to-date published data, and all stakeholders within a decision-making pipeline can have access to and view the same data – one version of the truth.

How does Scotland’s environment website use open data?

SCOTLAND’S ENVIRONMENT MAP draws on over 200 publicly available Web Map Services from a range of partners and external sources. This is the only place you can view any combination of environmental spatial data in a single map tool.

LAND INFORMATION SEARCH

This tool allows users to carry out instant spatial queries on over 40 open data sets published by different organisations as ESRI Rest services. These applications help users quickly identify environmental features, designations and sensitive areas fall within or close to a specific area of interest, that need to be taken into consideration when assessing the impact of current or proposed site activities for grants and licence applications, and environmental risk assessments.

DATA ANALYSIS THROUGH VISUALISATION

Scottish Natural Heritage publishes data that you can view in the PROTECTED NATURE SITES DATA ANALYSIS TOOL.  The tool is able to provide an interactive, searchable visual analysis of the condition of Scotland’s most important nature sites.

This open data is also used in the ECOSYSTEM HEALTH INDICATORS TOOL which is used to report on progress in delivering the 2020 Challenge for Scotland’s Biodiversity and prioritise action to protect and enhance ecosystem health. The data has been transformed into three summary indicators for Protected Nature Sites of Favourable, Recovery and Unfavourable. Users can view the indicators at a national Scotland summary…

or at a more area specific catchment area level.

Open Data Collaboration

Realising the full value of open data is a collaborative process with the aim of providing benefits for all. Organisations need to share data and work together to create new uses for it that can help to solve problems in ways that might not have been anticipated. Collaborations between multiple partners, such as the Scotland’s environment web partnership, can help convert open data from insight into action.  NBN is working with Scottish Natural Heritage and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, funded by the University of Edinburgh, on a project managed by DataLab to re-engineer the use of Scotland’s environment web partner open spatial data within the NBN Atlas.  The aim of the project is to enable automatic upload and processing of open spatial data in the NBN Atlas. This will reduce the overhead of maintaining up to date spatial data for both the data providers and the NBN Trust, which at the moment is a manual process.

NBN Atlas Scotland is part of Scotland’s environment network – a growing network of trusted and authoritative sources of environmental, data and information.

The post Opening up our data appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.

The Spatial Portal can be found by selecting ‘Analyse’ on the top menu of any page in the NBN Atlas Scotland and is a powerful analysis tool for you to start exploring your data holdings and overlaying with others.

Layout

The spatial portal has two main sections on your screen, the map on the right, and your menu functions to the left.  If you want more space to view your map, just select the arrow next to ‘help’ to shrink the left hand menu.  Much like standard GIS platforms, you can add layers to the map, change your basemap, reorder your layers and change the name and colour in this left hand panel.  All of this is available once you have some data on your map so let’s get some of that on….

Add to Map

By using the ‘Add to Map’ button on the top left hand side of the page, you can begin the process of building your own bespoke map. You can add either species, areas or layers, to add preloaded datasets and boundaries. You have options to change the display style and colour of species occurrences, choosing between various grid square options and point display. Keep on selecting the ‘Add to Map’ button to add more information to your map.

You may have a bespoke list of species which you wish to map and instead of typing a single species into the ‘Add Species’ box, you can upload your species list by selecting ‘Create new species list’ in the ‘Add Species’ box.   Alternatively, you may wish to use one of the pre-loaded species lists already in the NBN Atlas Scotland, see below for more information on these lists and how you can get lists yourself for yourself or your organisation included in the NBN Atlas.

You can also add Spatial Layers.  Again this list is ever growing and if you have a layer you wish to be featured in the NBN Atlas Scotland, or subsequent Atlases please let us know and we can either source it for you and load it to the Atlas, or even better, send us the shapefile and we can load it straight away.

When adding Spatial Layers if you choose to draw a polygon, click where you want the first point to be on the map and draw a line with your cursor. Repeat the process until you have the area you require and then double click the mouse to finish, the area you have selected with then turn red.

Tools

The main ‘Tool’ we wish to draw your attention to this month is the ‘Area Report’ function. This function gives you information about the records found in a specific area, and gives you the option to download this report, as well as allowing you to drill down into each specific section of interest. The outputs are figures for a preselected area, such as the number of species/occurrences, how many Scottish Biodiversity List species are present, threatened species that are present, as well as a breakdown of taxon groups. You can use this tool by selecting an area of interest (by either zooming to an area on the map, drawing your own boundary (Add to map> Area), or selecting a predefined area (Add to map> Layers)), then going to ‘Tools’, selecting ‘Area Report’ and then specifying the area that you are interested in. The area report appears on-screen, and you are given the option to download it.

Import

If the information you require is not already in the NBN Atlas Scotland, use the Import button to add your own information temporarily to the Spatial Portal.  You can add either a species list, or an area through this feature.   

We particularly wish to draw your attention to the preloaded species lists. Currently the system features five lists:

• IUCN species for UK
• RSPB Priority Species
• Scottish Biodiversity List
• SNH Sensitive Species list for Scotland
• Scottish Rural Development Programmes

These will grow with time, and you can also add your own lists by selecting ‘Create new species list’. Next month we will show you how to load your own species lists into the NBN Atlas Scotland for them to appear for anyone to use throughout the Atlas.  However if you fancy a sneak preview, take a look here: http://lists.als.scot/public/speciesLists.

You can also import a Shapefile or KML file through ‘Import Areas’. This is all new functionality not previously available through the NBN Gateway.  

In other news…

Additional bugs and enhancements that have been made this month include:

• The data partner tab on any species page now includes a simple table outlining contributing data partners, datasets, number of records and data licences assigned to the contributing data holdings
• The number of occurrence records available in the Atlas are now visible on the search results return page
• All geographic searches in NBN Atlas Scotland are now limited to just Scotland, so no more sneaky locations in London creeping into your searches!
• We located a bug in the system which was stopping the ‘accepted names’ being displayed alongside synonyms in the search return pages. This has now been fixed, and all species names clearly display accepted names where the nomenclature has been updated over time.

The post NBN Atlas December progress update appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.

Thanks for all of your feedback- we’ve been kept busy with ordering, prioritising, actioning and testing all of it, and hope you’ll enjoy the resulting new features developed so far.  Rest assured, more will follow!

5 Things To Know About the NBN Atlas Scotland:

1. Mapping Interfaces: The NBN Atlas has two mapping interfaces, the Interactive Map and the Spatial Portal.  Lots of you have been asking how you can load your own shapefile into the Atlas.  You can do this through the Spatial Portal which offers more advanced functionality than the basic Interactive Map.  You can now link through to the Spatial Portal from the Interactive Map, as well as going straight there using the ‘Analyse’ button on the top navigation bar.  Do these two names work for you?  If not, we are open to suggestions on what we should call the Interactive Map.

2. Grid square mapping: You can now view records as both points and now also as grid squares in both the interactive map and the spatial portal. Given records come in a range of precisions, we heard that you want to be able to see records at both their finest resolution available but also to get an overview of the coverage of the record distribution. You can select from an option of ‘Variable grid size’, which shows all the available resolutions from 10km – 100m on the map, or ‘Responsive resolution’ which will only show the highest available resolution at your given zoom, changing as you zoom in and out of the map.  There is also the option to only show 10 km grid squares. We have built this grid mapping functionality in, as the original Australian platform that the NBN Atlas is based on wasn’t designed to cater for grid squares. What’s the most useful option for you?  Maps can also now be exported displaying these grid squares on them.

3. Grid references in downloads: A lot of the feedback suggested that grid references were essential in data downloads. Grid references now appear in downloads (as well as lat/longs) and are broken down into columns detailing Grid refs for 100km precisions, 10km, 2km, 1km, 100m (where available) and any location name provided.

4. Finding data you can use: You can now filter by licence. This will help users only view the data that they know they are able to use.  In the Interactive Map, select the button in the top left hand corner to ‘Customise Filters’.  Select ‘Licence’ under the Attribution heading and Update.  This will add the heading ‘Attribution’ on the left hand side for you to expand and select and deselect the licence as necessary. In the Spatial Portal, records can only be filtered and coloured when they are displayed as points.  This is due to the fact that one grid square may contain multiple records, each with different attributions.  So, select ‘Points’ in the left hand panel, then ‘Colour By’ and select ‘Licence’.  As with the Interactive Map, you can then toggle on and off the licences you require.

5. Visibility of Data Licences: Licence information is now given in the downloads. So you can filter and sort data after download and each record is clearly marked with the licence governing its use.

We hope that this blog post has helped you to learn something new about the functionality of the NBN Atlas Scotland. We are aware that there is still work to do, but please do continue giving us your feedback, we’d rather receive a suggestion twice (or thrice!) than not at all!

The post NBN Atlas Scotland progress update appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.