GBIF.ES Biodiversity Data Portal
What is the GBIF.ES Biodiversity Data Portal?
The GBIF.ES Biodiversity Data Portal allows the scientific community, and wider society, to find, access, combine, visualize, download and analyze biodiversity data. This online platform makes available biodiversity records published through GBIF Spain by national institutions and by foreigners whose data are located in Spain.
The GBIF.ES Data Portal is a tool used by Spanish scientists during their research and also used by environmental managers and officers when they are planning conservation programmes and making decisions on politics related to the use of biodiversity data.
The information contained in the GBIF.ES Data Portal is classified into three categories: datasets, collections and projects or institutions. Records from those three categories can be explored in different ways: using distribution maps, statistics, associated images, etc.
You can access the GBIF.ES Data Portal at https://datos.gbif.es/?lang=en.
Currently, the GBIF.ES Data Portal is available in Spanish, Catalan and English. If you are interested in supporting the translation of this platform to another language, you can do it through the Crowdin application: https://crowdin.com/project/ala-i18n.
If you need to solve any technical issue or find any error when using the GBIF.ES Data Portal, please, contact us at support@gbif.es.
Services offered by the GBIF.ES Data Portal:
- Register of institutions, projects, collections and databases: learn about the institution, the collections they hold and view records of specimens that have been databased. Currently, only the collections of GBIF.ES partners are shown. Over time this list will expand to include all natural history collections in Spain.
- Searching engines for biodiversity records:
- Filters for simple searches: they work by using keyword(s).
- Filters for advanced searches: they are used to make a selection of data grouped in specific taxa, institutions, collections, countries, etc.
- Batch taxon search: they filter more than one taxon/scientific name in the same search.
- Catalogue number search.
- Spatial search: they work using drawing tools (polygon, rectangle, circle) or importing an existing GIS area (WKT files).
- Data statistical information: dynamics charts for data, including information such as temporal distribution, habitats or taxonomical rank.
- Maps with georeferenced records: the GBIF.ES Data Portal has an interactive map which allows the visualization of all georeferenced records and includes some useful functionalities like searches by using drawing tools.
- Record images: many records have associated images which can be visualized in the GBIF.ES Data Portal. Moreover, the Portal includes some functionalities to take measures, zoom, calibrate or download each image.
- Register download: it allows to download the selected data once the user has logged in the GBIF.ES Data Portal.
- Region section: useful to explore records in specific regions such as Protected Natural Areas, Provinces, National Biogeographical Regions, Special Protection Areas (SPA) and Natura 2000.
- Species lists: this tool allows you to upload a list of species, and work with that list within the Portal. This tool is still under development.
- Species records: information is presented in the species level: description, vernacular names, taxonomical rank, image galleries, literature, and DNA information. Currently, the Portal contains information for more than 151,000 species. This tool is still under development.
- ALA4R: is an R programming language package which enables the scientific community to directly access data and resources hosted in the GBIF.ES Data Portal.
- Spatial Portal: users can locate species on an interactive map and explore the associated information in relation with time, a specific region, the quality of the species data, and the link of species with their natural environment. This tool is still under development.
Tutorial videos on how to use the Data Portal
| How to search and download biodiversity data in an Atlas | How to use regions/spatial module in an Atlas |
Other promotional materials about the use of the Data Portal
- Presentations about the use of the Data Portal:
- How can we search and download biodiversity data from the GBIF portals – Katia Cezón (Spanish / .pdf / 1,67 MB)
- Use cases about the use of the GBIF.ES Data Portal (Spanish/ .pdf / 1,78 MB)
- Use cases about the use of the GBIF.ES Data Portal (English / .pdf / 2,20 MB)
The Living Atlases Community
The GBIF.ES Data Portal is based on the open-source software infrastructure initially developed by the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). GBIF.ES was the first Node in adapting the ALA portal to another national context in 2014. Since then, there are more than 20 Living Atlases around the world and more than a dozen under development. All these GBIF Nodes and other organizations working with biodiversity data, with support of the GBIF Secretariat, have created the Living Atlases Community, whose main goal is the promotion, implementation, translation, documentation, and improvement of the ALA tools to benefit the GBIF network and the whole biodiversity informatics community.
Some of the countries and institutions which are part of this Community are France, Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Sweden, Australia, Canada, GBIF, VertNet and Canadensys. You can find the full list of participants on the website of the Living Atlases Community.
The establishment of the Living Atlases Community has been facilitated by the following CESP projects (Capacity Enhancement Support Programme) funded by GBIF:
- Internationalization of the ALA node portal (2015/2016)
- Francophone mentoring and translation of the open-source ALA platform (2017/2018)
- International Living Atlases workshop (2017/2018)
- International Living Atlases workshop: how to improve data use with Atlas of Living Australia modules (2018/2019)
- Usage of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and GBIF data portals: how to prepare your data, and reuse them on national and international platforms (Workshops) (2018/2019)
If you are a programmer and you would like to know how the computer code used by the different Biodiversity Data Portals has been built, you can access the ALA GitHub: https://github.com/AtlasOfLivingAustralia.
To be aware of the news from the Living Atlases Community you can follow its media channels on Twitter (@LivingAtlases) and YouTube.