Attendees included representatives from country agencies, alongside recording scheme members and NGO’s.

Aims of the meeting

These were to:

• Agree a first draft of criteria to apply to the sensitive species list
• Agree a frequency for review
• Discuss who should get the final say in a dispute
• Discuss who should be responsible for reviewing the criteria and sensitive species list
• Discuss how sensitive species should be displayed on the NBN Atlas

The group was able to meet a consensus on all of the aims, and made suggestions for development that would help improve and refine the screening of sensitive species.

Next steps

The recommendations will be circulated to the wider Network as part of a draft Sensitive Species Policy for comment.  From this we aim to get feedback on a first draft of the policy from a focused group by mid October.  We should then have something to send out to the wider Network by the end of November, with feedback concluded and the final policy written by end of January 2018.

The post NBN Atlas sensitive species policy workshop appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.

The NBN Atlas and country portals hold their data in Darwin Core format. Darwin Core is an internationally recognised standard for biodiversity data, and we are proud to be following standards such as this that will increase the accessibility to, and sharing of, our nation’s biodiversity data across the globe.

Sending data to the NBN Atlas

Ideally, data would be sent through to the NBN Atlas as a Darwin Core Archive*, with metadata being supplied in EML (Ecological Metadata Language). However, we are aware that not all of our data partners will have the technical capacity to create these file types. Therefore we have created CSV templates with Darwin Core terms and XML tags (headings that are compliant with EML). We can then convert those into the correct formats on ingestion into the system. These CSV files each come with guidance documents to help you complete the templates.

*a Darwin Core Archive is a single dataset (zip) that contains all of the information for species occurrence records. It is a collection of CSV/text files (that adhere to Darwin Core Terms), with a metadata XML to describe the files in the Archive.

Guidance documents

The templates and guidance documents can be found on the ‘Share species occurrence records with the NBN Atlas‘ help guide.  Once you have completed your template, please save as a CSV and send to data@nbnatlas.org

You can, of course, submit your data to us in the Darwin Core Archives format if you have the technical capacity.

We will also still accept data in the NBN Data Exchange Format from partners who used to supply data to the NBN Gateway. However, we will be phasing out the use of the old NBN Data Exchange Format and will be working with data partners who use it to ensure an easy transition to using the Darwin Core or Darwin Core Archive formats.

Dataset upload

We will try and upload new datasets as quickly as possible, but please bear with us if there are any delays with this.

More information on Darwin Core

Find out more information on Darwin Core and the terms used

The post Data upload templates and guidance now available appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.

In order to allow time for datasets to be transferred from the NBN Gateway to the NBN Atlas ready for 1st April 2017 (where Data Partners have agreed to this), the deadline for data submissions to the NBN Gateway is Tuesday 28th February 2017. Unfortunately, any datasets submitted to the NBN Gateway after this date will not be accepted. All subsequent datasets for inclusion in the NBN Atlas will need to be submitted directly to the NBN Atlas (further information on this process will be available soon).

As we have already communicated to data partners, the transfer of datasets from the NBN Gateway to the NBN Atlas requires official approval in the form of a Data Partner Agreement. Thank you to everyone who has already returned their Agreements. The official deadline for the return of these has now passed, but we do still need to receive them from you.  If there are any remaining Data Partner Agreements to be submitted then please do so before 28th February 2017 in line with the final submission date for the NBN Gateway. After this date, datasets will need to be submitted directly to the NBN Atlas, along with the accompanying Data Partner Agreement. The Agreements have been sent to your dataset administrator for the NBN Gateway, so please check with them if you haven’t received it for action.

The last submission of data from the NBN Gateway to GBIF took place in December 2016. There will therefore be no further submissions of data from the NBN Gateway to GBIF; all future data submissions will be run from the NBN Atlas.

Further information regarding the transition from the NBN Gateway to the NBN Atlas for NBN Data Partners will be made available in due course.

Key dates at a glance

• 28 February 2017 – deadline for data submissions to the NBN Gateway
• 28 February 2017 – absolute deadline for return of Data Partner Agreements
• 31st March 2017 – NBN Gateway will close
• 1st April 2017 – NBN Atlas goes live

Thank you for your ongoing support with this major change to how we share our biodiversity data. If you have any questions please do get in touch with the NBN Secretariat at support@nbn.org.uk

For further details on the NBN Atlas, please see the Where we are section of the website and the NBN Atlas blogs

The post Update on NBN Gateway and NBN Atlas with key dates appeared first on National Biodiversity Network.