Around one million ArtenFinder data transmitted to GBIF: Software installation enables automated data flow to leading biodiversity data resource

Around 80,000 observations of native animals, plants and fungi are reported within one year alone by nature lovers to ArtenFinder, a database operated by the Rhineland-Palatinate Foundation for Nature and the Environment (SNU) for the registration of species occurrences. The aim of the initiative is to provide valuable information to the respective state authorities and nature conservation initiatives, to raise awareness of the diversity and beauty of nature and to network species experts of all ages and backgrounds. Data can be reported by registered users nationwide. Currently, Rhineland-Palatinate and Berlin (responsible here is the Stiftung Naturschutz Berlin (SNB)) are the federal states that feed the data into their respective state databases. In Rhineland-Palatinate alone, around one million data records have been collected and published via the Species Finder portal since the database was launched in 2011.

The SNU has now received support from NFDI4Biodiversity to help the ever-growing wealth of ArtenFinder data gain even greater visibility –especially in the scientific community: By installing a tried and tested software program, the data can now be published automatically and openly in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The findability of the GBIF database makes it accessible to the global scientific community: researchers and other data enthusiasts can find hundreds of millions of data from museums, field research and citizen science, which have already been used for numerous scientific studies on relevant topics such as climate change, invasive species and nature conservation.

“We are delighted that the data is now available to scientists all over the world.”

Jochen Krebühl (Managing Director of the Rhineland-Palatinate Nature and Environment Foundation)

In addition, the ArtenFinder data can be found in the Living Atlas of Nature in Germany (LAND), a biodiversity data portal based on GBIF and developed in NFDI4Biodiversity, which can be used to discover species in your own environment.

“We are delighted that the funding from NFDI4Biodiversity has made it possible to automatically forward the SpeciesFinder data to GBIF and that this data is now available to scientists all over the world,” says Jochen Krebühl, Managing Director of the SNU.

Software installation with great effect

The connection to GBIF was made possible by installing the BioCASe Provider Software (Biological Collections Access Service). It enables data-holding institutions to publish occurrence data as a web service and XML archive, which can then be read by GBIF and made available in the data portal - without interfering with the existing database structure. Although the software can be used for any conceptual XML data schema, it is mainly used to publish occurrence data from voucher or observation databases for primary biodiversity data networks using the ABCD data standard and its extensions - in addition to GBIF, for example, for the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN).

Furthermore, the implementation of the automated data flow included necessary transformations at database level (through views) as well as the creation and filling of a metadata table on the SpeciesFinder database side. In order to ensure regular updating of the data, a weekly update of the XML archives generated by BioCASe was also set up using corresponding cron jobs. The data is published under a CC-BY license in order to make clear the desire for attribution of the ArtenFinder portal when using the dataset.

NFDI4Biodiversity provided funding

The installation was financed by project funds from the large-scale NFDI4Biodiversity project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). Two partners of the network helped with the implementation: the Federation for Biological Data e.V. (GFBio e.V.) as a contractual partner for the foundation and its technical service provider, and the Center for Biodiversity Informatics and Collection Data Integration (ZBS) at the Botanic Garden Berlin (Bo), which provided technical support for the installation of the provider software.

“We are delighted that, as a network of experts, we have been able to contribute to making highly relevant data accessible to many new users,” says Barbara Ebert, Managing Director of GFBio e.V. and Deputy Spokesperson of the NFDI4Biodiversity project. “In addition to the broad lines that we have been pursuing for years, it is these comparatively small but very effective solutions that show the added value that NFDI4Biodiversity can offer the community.”

Contact

If you have any questions about the ArtenFinder project, please contact project manager Susanne Müller (Susanne.Mueller@snu.rlp.de).