This dataset shows all areas of Australia affected by the 2019-2020 bushfires. You can use this data in the ALA to search for species that may have been affected by the 2019-20 bushfires, by mapping occurrence records that have been logged in those areas, both before and after the fires.

How to use the bushfire extent data in the ALA

For more information on how to use this data in the ALA, read our help article Using the National Indicative Aggregated Fire Extent Dataset 2019-20 in the ALA.

The National Indicative Aggregated Fire Extent Dataset

The National Indicative Aggregated Fire Extent Dataset was developed by the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) to help quantify the potential impacts of the 2019/20 bushfires on wildlife, plants and ecological communities, and identify appropriate response and recovery actions.

The dataset is a reliable, agreed, fit-for-purpose and repeatable national dataset of burnt areas across Australia for the 2019/20 bushfire season.

The National Indicative Aggregated Fire Extent Dataset includes:

• data from the national Emergency Management Spatial Information Network Australia (EMSINA) data service, which is the official fire extent currently used by the Australian Government, and
• supplementary data from other sources to form a cumulative national view of fire extent from 1 July 2019 to the 21 April 2020, these sources include NSW Rural Fire Service, Northern Australian Fire Information (NAFI), QLD Fire and Emergency Service, QLD Department of Environment and Science, SA Country Fire Service, SA Department for Environment and Water, Tasmanian Fire Service, TAS Department of Primary Industry, Parks, Water and Environment, VIC Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning, WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.

The dataset is released on behalf of the Australian Government and endorsed by the National Burnt Area Dataset Working Group, convened by the National Bushfire Recovery Agency.

More information and links

• For more details about the dataset visit National Indicative Aggregated Fire Extent Dataset v20200428.
• For help accessing and using the dataset in the ALA, please email  support@ala.org.au

Since the Data Quality Project launched in February, the team has been working with the ALA user community to identify data quality issues and develop solutions.  Thank you to everyone who has completed our surveys, contributed to baseline perceptions of data quality, helped to prioritise issues, or tested solutions so far. 

First proposed software release – improvements to data filters 

In response to issues identified in our data quality survey (see below), the project team are developing a new capability to pre-filter search results. This means lower quality records will not be shown unless they are actively included. 

The new software will enable users to switch filters on or off and manage them as a group or individually. Information is available on the fields and data that make up the filters through mouse-over text and clickable info icons (i).   

We are still testing the new software and welcome your feedback.

How to test the software

1. Sign in to our ALA Test Environment.
2. View the filters in the new user interface (UI) element above the search results. 
3. Interact with the filters, noting how they work for you.
4. Email any comments or feedback to dataquality@ala.org.au.

Prioritisation survey results 

After establishing a baseline for perceptions of data quality (see results), we conducted a prioritisation survey. This helped to identify which issues the data quality project should address first. The top two issues identified were: 

• ALA users are using data accessed via the ALA without filtering out records that are not fit for purpose. 
• Due to data quality indicators not being present, users are often unsure whether to use particular records or datasets. 

For more information on the data quality project please see the Data Quality project page or contact us at dataquality@ala.org.au. 

On the surface marine animals such as reef corals and plant species like eucalypts sound very different.

Sure they are both iconic Australian species but could they really end up being best mates in the fight against climate change?

“You betcha,” according to native forest specialist Dr Trevor Booth from CSIRO and coral researcher Dr Paul Muir from the Museum of Tropical Queensland.

The scientists have teamed up to highlight these important Australian ecosystems and their similarities in biology and vulnerability to rapid climate change.

Their paper Climate change impacts on Australia’s eucalypt and coral species: Comparing and sharing knowledge across disciplines has been published in the online journal WIREs Climate Change.

Same, same but different

There are many similarities in the biology of eucalypts and corals. They are both long-lived, unmoving organisms that can reproduce asexually, but also sexually by broadcasting very large quantities of tiny offspring. Corals are the most plant-like of all animals, deriving much of their energy from photosynthesis via microscopic algae that live symbiotically within their tissues. But perhaps most importantly, eucalypts and reef corals are the key foundation species in their respective ecosystems, providing much of the framework that hundreds of thousands of other species rely upon.

“Losing these key foundation species would be catastrophic for many of our most diverse ecosystems,” Booth said.

“Coral is the more vulnerable of the two groups when it comes to climate change but both collections of species have been and will be significantly affected.”

The impact of climate change

Eucalyptus trees and reef corals are on the front line of many climate change impacts. Just in the past six months, eucalypts have suffered heavy losses from the catastrophic 2019-2020 Australian bushfires linked to extreme climate events. Corals have suffered mortalities from moderate to severe coral bleaching associated with unusually high seawater temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef.

“By comparing research efforts, eucalypt and reef coral workers might benefit from each other’s experiences,” Muir said.

“Researchers are putting huge efforts into understanding these threats, likely future changes and how we can manage these systems to prevent species extinctions.”

One example where knowledge could be usefully shared is in the prediction of changes to species distributions that will occur from climate change impacts.

How are a plant and animal species going to help each other to fight climate change?

CSIRO researchers made pioneering advances in developing species distribution modelling or SDM, which determines how environmental factors such as mean annual temperature and rainfall of the driest quarter shape a species distribution. More recently, eucalypt researchers from various agencies have predicted likely future changes in species distribution under various climate change scenarios. These results are critical for managing ecosystems, for example by identifying particularly vulnerable species and tailoring management responses to prevent species declines. Researchers have spent many years working collaboratively with other colleagues and institutions developing the large datasets of species distributions and environmental conditions that are required for SDM analyses. In contrast, SDM analyses have only rarely been used in coral research but could provide important information for managing the future of reefs.

“I am hoping the work we have done with eucalypts can help coral researchers benefit from these methods and avoid some of the traps,” Booth said.

Four key areas of research Booth and Muir considered in the journal article were:

(1) modelling current distributions,

(2) assessing impacts of climate change on future distributions,

(3) using human-assisted migration to improve survival and

(4) applying genetic enhancement to improve species’ survival.

With many years of examining the climatic tolerances of eucalypts, it is not surprising that experience from eucalypt studies may have more to offer climate change studies of corals than vice versa. However coral studies are successfully and rapidly applying novel spatial, controlled environment and genomic methods to assess how coral species may adapt to changing climatic conditions.

Drawing on existing data bases

For their research, the authors extensively used the Atlas of Living Australia that provides an online repository for both terrestrial and marine data along with a suite of tools to analyse these data.

“The marine section of the data base is not used as much as it could be so it would be great if our journal article prompts more coral researchers and community members to use it and enhance existing datasets of coral species distribution and environmental conditions,” Booth said.

The Atlas of Living Australia also supports and integrates the extensive national citizen science community into its data system.

Two unlikely fellows

Booth and Muir, and the partnership they formed for their research, was almost as unlikely as their subject matter.

“I was listening to the ABC ‘Science Show’ in February 2019 and they had a program on coral spawning and assisted evolution work taking place at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville,” Booth said.

“I thought to myself ‘that’s an awful lot like the work we are doing with eucalypts’ and that prompted this exchange of ideas.”

Booth got in touch with a contact at AIMS who introduced him to Muir at the Museum and the collaboration began. All three organisations contributed to some early discussions relevant to the final journal paper.

“At first I thought it was a bit of a strange idea, but I soon realised the potential of the research. And I do take an interest in trees as I live on a large property,” Muir said.

“I’m very fortunate Paul was willing to continue,” Booth joked.

However the partnership came about, both scientists agree “there’s a lot to be learnt from looking outside the box of one’s own research area”.

The results of the first survey for our Data Quality Project are in. Here are the key findings.

For more information and how to contact us and keep up to date

• Visit the ALA Data Quality Project Page
• Email dataquality@ala.org.au to sign up and receive project updates and invitations to beta test
• View the Data Quality Project on GitHub to keep track of activities
• Use the Data Quality repository to add and comment on issues
• Follow us on Twitter  

The ALA regularly updates its taxonomy from taxonomic directories to ensure that information in the ALA reflects current thinking about the classification of species.

During the update, the ALA data store was inconsistent. This meant that for three to four days, some records were re-processed with the new taxonomy and some were not yet updated.

This did not affect most day-to-day ALA operations, such as searching for records or mapping, since most ALA functions use a prepared index of the data store, optimised for searching. However, if you looked at an individual record you might have found references to classifications not yet updated in the ALA’s main database. During updates like this, we recommend that you wait until the update completes until you access research data.

The update took four days to complete and all ALA applications have returned to being consistent.

What was updated?

The new taxonomy contains a major improvement for certain plant names. Known scientific names for plants not yet placed by the Australian Plant Census have previously been simply placed under the kingdom Plantae. We are now using contextual information supplied by the plant name data to help place these names more accurately in the taxonomic tree. For example, Abroma fastuosa is now correctly placed as a member of Abroma genus in the Malvaceae (Mallow) family, and many wallabies that were in the Macropus genus are now in the Notamacropus genus.

Another update that many ALA users may notice is a name change for the Australian Magpie. The scientific name for Australian Magpie used to be Cracticus tibicen, it is now Gymnorhina tibicen. It now sits in its own genus Gymnorhina. The name of the genus is from the Ancient Greek gumnos for “naked” or “bare” and rhis, rhinos “nostrils”. More information on Magpie taxonomy is available on the Australian Magpie Wikipedia page and in this article The generic taxonomy of the Australian Magpie and Australo-Papuan butcherbirds is not all black-and-white by Martin Cake (Murdoch University), Andrew Black (South Australian Museum) and Leo Joseph (CSIRO).

We thank the following directories for their ongoing support and expertise:

• Australian Plant Name Index (APNI)
• Australian Plant Census (APC)
• Australian Faunal Directory (AFD)
• Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS)
• Australian Fungi
• Australian Mosses Online
• Australian Codes of Aquatic Biota
• Catalogue of Life
• New Zealand Organisms Register

Back to ALA Newsletter February 2020

Environmental DNA surveys can generally be divided into two types: specifically targeted surveys focused on a single species; and broad-based surveys providing an overall sweep of taxonomic presence in a particular environmental medium.

eDNA data is helping to answer many different research questions

Uptake of eDNA as a biomonitoring tool by government and industry is growing rapidly. eDNA is quickly becoming a standard tool in the environmental scientist’s kit.

Searching for Nessie

eDNA continues to be used in surprising ways, with a team of researchers from New Zealand sampling water from Loch Ness in Scotland to search for evidence of sharks, seals, plesiosaurs and other imagined candidates for the Loch Ness Monster. What did they find? Plenty of eels. What other cryptic species can you imagine searching for?

Mapping soil Microbiomes

The Australian Microbiome Project has mapped the soil and marine microbiomes of Australia spanning the entire Australian continent and covering its marine waters from Antarctic to Christmas Island. The team is now characterising the function of microbes in different ecosystems.

Detecting reef species

On reefs, eDNA can provide a shortcut for detecting species. CSIRO researcher Cindy Bessey compared conventional and eDNA methods of detecting tropical fish species on the reefs surrounding Browse Island to the north of Australia. Cindy watched 100 hours of underwater video footage recorded over two years and counted 99 species of tropical fishes. Combining her efforts with other researchers, who used multiple approaches from video to diving, a total of 200 fish species were identified. Alternatively, using eDNA techniques on water sampled at two locations from just one trip to Browse Island, Cindy detected 209 fish species. Her team is now refining methods for filtering eDNA from seawater.

Cindy’s upcoming paper in the journal Environmental DNA, describing a fish biodiversity survey of a remote tropical atoll, will link to the associated eDNA records on ALA. This should become commonplace.

Other teams are testing living sponges for their inherent ability to monitor the animals surrounding them.

Making data more accessible

“In eDNA we generate millions of DNA barcodes in a single experiment – rather than this data languishing on someone’s computer or hiding on a database – it is vital we explore ways to make the data accessible,” said Prof. Michael Bunce, Chief Scientist, Environmental Protection Authority, New Zealand.

“The incorporation of eDNA data alongside other biological data within ALA is a world first, it provides a way for everyone to use and re-use the data. The integration of biological datasets like this is vital as we build more nuanced tools to understand how our environment is changing around us.”

eDNA data in the ALA

“The Atlas of Living Australia is continually growing. We now have over 85 million species occurrence records and we’re looking to include new types of data, including eDNA,” says ALA Director Andre Zerger.

“We’ve worked closely with research communities to figure out the best way to present eDNA in the ALA and we’re pleased this type of data is now available and accessible to our users.”

So far, eDNA data uploaded into the ALA includes:

1. 

   Species specific survey data, where eDNA surveys can be used as a source of both presence and absence data, such as eDNA data from eggs and larvae of the West Australian Dhufish (Glaucosoma hebraicum).

   View records.

   Read more about this research by CSIRO’s Joanna Strzelecki and colleagues.

2. Large scale eDNA survey data that have the potential to fill data gaps both spatially and taxonomically, such as eDNA from the Australian Microbiome Project.
   View records.

   Read more about this research by CSIRO’s Andrew Bisset and colleagues at BioPlatforms Australia.

3. 

   Species interaction data, for instance where gut or faeces eDNA sampling is done on a traditionally surveyed organisms. For example, eDNA data from Mobula rays (Mobula sp. Rafinesque) stomach contents in the Bohol Sea, Philippines.

   View records.

   Read more about this research by CSIRO’s Andrew Bisset and colleagues at BioPlatforms Australia.

You can now upload and access eDNA data using the ALA

ALA contributors can submit eDNA records to ALA. Users can filter this type of data to include or exclude it from searches.

Read Environmental DNA (eDNA) in the ALA to find out more.

Back to ALA Newsletter February 2020

GEO Week is an annual event and the accompanying Ministerial Summit is only held once every four years. It was the first time GEO Week was held in Oceania, and was one of the world’s largest gatherings of Earth observation practitioners and policy makers.

ALA at GEO Week 2019

The Atlas of Living Australia co-hosted a side event with the Global Biodiversity information facility (GBIF) and the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (BON) titled ‘Biodiversity data infrastructures for supporting global biodiversity monitoring and assessment programs’, and participated in the Australia booth and National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) stand.

The event heard from users working along the biodiversity data value chain, from data collection and aggregation to scientists working with the data, to policymakers using science to make informed policy decisions.

GEO BON (Laetitia Navarro) and GBIF (Donald Hobern) provided an overview of the state of biodiversity data observation networks and aggregators world-wide. CSIRO’s Simon Ferrier talked about their biodiversity data, and specifically data from the ALA, to predict how biodiversity will respond to environmental changes. The Department of Environment and Energy (Jeanette Corbitt) discussed the use of such science to support State of the Environment (SoE) reporting, which informs government policy.

All presenters agreed on the importance of obtaining high quality data, and on using existing data to identify data gaps and inform further data collection.

“GEO Week was an important event for the ALA and a great opportunity to deepen relationships with Australian government and international agencies that are potential users of ALA’s data and spatial analysis tools,” said ALA Director, Andre Zerger.

“It also provided an excellent forum to meet new people and build connections in the global Earth observation and biodiversity research communities.”

What are Earth observations?

Scientists and science agencies gather information about our Earth in many ways, including from floating ocean buoys, land stations, and satellites orbiting and observing Earth. Data collected this way enable environmental, resources and disaster management monitoring and assessment.

Through data sharing and infrastructure, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) improves availability, access and use of Earth observations for research across many sectors including space, agriculture, water and biodiversity.

For more information, visit GEO Week 2019.

This week we launched iNaturalist Australia, the Australian node of iNaturalist, the world’s leading global social biodiversity network.

We now encourage you to use iNaturalist Australia to record your individual plant, animal and fungi sightings. You can still upload sightings using our Record a Sighting function, but we will be phasing it out.

How to record an observation with iNaturalist Australia

You can record observations with iNaturalist Australia on your desktop and by using the iNaturalist app on your iPhone or Android device. Uploading an observation to iNaturalist Australia on your desktop is very similar to using the ALA’s Record a Sighting function.

1. First, go to iNaturalist Australia and click Sign up to create an account. 
2. Log in to iNaturalist Australia and click ↑Upload.
3. Drag and drop your image file or choose the file from your device.
4. Click in the species name box, then select from the list of suggested species.
5. Enter date and location details.
6. Click Submit 1 observation.
7. Your record will appear on the Your observations page, where you can see all your records in a list or on a map. On this page, you can sort and search your observations by date, taxonomy or location.

All iNaturalist Australia observations are loaded into the ALA regularly. 

User guides and FAQs

To learn more about iNaturalist Australia including how to link your iNaturalist and ALA accounts, read our User Guides and FAQs:

• ALA and iNaturalist Australia
• How to create an account with iNaturalist
• How can I see my iNaturalist records in the ALA?
• All iNaturalist Australia help articles

Please also feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Why we’ve teamed up with iNaturalist

We are keen to improve your user experience as well as the quality of human observation data entering the ALA. For these reasons, we recently became a signed-up member of the iNaturalist network, and now manage iNaturalist Australia, our localised gateway into iNaturalist (for more information on this collaboration read ALA-iNaturalist collaboration).

Collaborating with iNaturalist is a wonderful opportunity for us and our users. It provides an easy-to-use desktop and mobile platform, support for species identification, and tools for assessing data quality. All iNaturalist Australia data is regularly fed into the ALA and you can link your ALA and iNaturalist accounts to see all your records in one place.

Human observation data is a valuable part of the ALA. It helps to create a more detailed picture of our national biodiversity, and assists scientists and decision makers to deliver better outcomes for the environment and our species. iNaturalist Australia’s species identification features and data quality measures will ensure your plant, animal or fungi sightings are more valuable than ever.

Benefits of iNaturalist Australia

• Species identification: using image recognition suggestions and community expertise, iNaturalist helps you identify the plant, animal, or fungi you have found.
• Improved data quality: iNaturalist’s species identification system helps citizen science records become ‘Research Grade’. This in turn means the observation data you enter is more valuable and more likely to be used by scientists and others to manage, protect and conserve our biodiversity.
• Excellent user experience: iNaturalist has a clear, easy-to-use interface on both desktop and mobile devices. You can view your sightings on a map, or in date order, view other images of the same species, and participate in species identification conversations.
• Open data: the ALA receives regular data feeds from iNaturalist Australia. iNaturalist is built on open source software development and has open data at the core of its mission — this mirrors the ALA’s core principles.

A bit more about iNaturalist

iNaturalist Australia is the Australian node of iNaturalist, a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.

iNaturalist is a global social biodiversity platform designed to share and discuss biodiversity. Built on open source software, it supports open data, and has a strong community engagement focus including the interest and encouragement of the taxonomic community.

iNaturalist has a strong commitment to improving data quality for science and international collaboration.

Read more on the iNaturalist blog.

Approximately 500 biodiversity surveys are conducted for EIA in Western Australia each year. The data collected in these site assessments is often extensive and contains many valuable species records, spatial information and a survey report which interprets the data.

Until recently, this biodiversity data was not consolidated and was rarely shared. In acknowledgement of this situation, WA’s government, industry representatives and environmental consultants had been calling for a mechanism to make this biodiversity data more accessible and re-usable.

The IBSA solution

Led by the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, the WA Environmental Protection Authority and the WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, in collaboration with the WA Biodiversity Science Institute (WABSI) and with the input of stakeholders including mining companies and environmental consultants, WA has established a nationally-leading programme for sharing the biodiversity survey data and metadata that result from environmental assessments.

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) was approached to provide the digital infrastructure solution and expertise in biodiversity data management and has played a key role in enabling the capture and distribution of this biodiversity information, which is critical for WA’s approvals process.

The result is IBSA – the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments – an online portal for land-based biodiversity survey data in Western Australia. IBSA is hosted on the ALA’s data collection tool, BioCollect. It provides a central public register of surveys moving through the approvals process and enables efficient data sharing by allowing data to be uploaded to projects and shared with all relevant stakeholders at the same time.

IBSA was launched in 2018 and one year on, we’re already seeing the impact it is having on data availability and usability in the sector.

Impact and outcomes

There are already almost 450 surveys in the IBSA system, with over 350 available in the public web portal while others await upload when the relevant assessments conclude.

The IBSA surveys represent over 180 different proponents from mining, agricultural, local government and other development types throughout Western Australia. The majority of assessments are associated with applications for permits to clear native vegetation, under assessment by the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation and the WA Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, while the remainder are associated with significant proposals under assessment by the WA Environmental Protection Authority.

More than half of the surveys in IBSA have data sets and reports attached that the relevant proponents have allowed to be published in full on the platform. Excitingly, in almost half of cases the proponent has licensed the survey data for re-use under a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 licence – this means that, subject to some simple conditions, third parties can freely re-use the information for their own research or projects. This proportion is expected to increase as proponents become more familiar with the role of IBSA in the assessment process.

“The Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments is a ground-breaking initiative that will promote the sharing of vital biodiversity data obtained as part of the environmental assessment process,” said WA Acting Environment Minister Hon Francis Logan BA (Hons) MLA.

“Creating a central and accessible index for this data will deliver greater efficiencies for the public and private sector, aid with decision making and most importantly it will have lasting benefits for Western Australia’s flora and fauna,” concluded Minister Logan.

Proponent data and the ALA

Flora and fauna occurrence data can also be accessed under licence from surveys in IBSA and imported into the state and national (ALA) biodiversity data repositories, where it can then be used for other biodiversity research and environmental decision making. Whilst this is not currently part of the IBSA process, the ALA is looking forward to being able to make the IBSA data more accessible and versatile for end-users.

The ALA’s broad user base – spanning ecoscience researchers, natural resource managers, and government departments – recognises the value of proponent data and is looking forward to the opportunity to access it on the ALA.

What is proponent data?

Biodiversity data contained in Environmental Impact Assessments submitted as part of development applications.

How IBSA works

Proponents (private development companies, environmental consultants etc) who conduct land-based biodiversity surveys to support applications for native vegetation clearing permits, works approvals and licences; or referrals to regulatory authorities of proposals and schemes are required to submit an electronic data package.

The relevant agencies then submit the data to IBSA during the assessment or compliance process on the proponent’s behalf.

Once data has been used for assessment purposes, WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation makes basic information for each data set – the metadata – available online via IBSA. Data owners have control over how accessible the complete data sets are.

For more information about IBSA:

• visit the Index of Biodiversity Surveys for Assessments
• watch an IBSA familiarisation session presentation
• access the IBSA portal

Back to ALA newsletter – June 2019

The main function of the ALA is to enable users to access, visualise and analyse biodiversity data (predominantly occurrence records – where plants and animals are). In order to do this, the ALA needs authoritative reference lists and resources to provide context to the data, and to enable users to search, filter, analyse and visualise the data.

The most obvious reference information critical to the ALA is naming and taxonomy data.

Names and classification: science fundamentals

The science of naming and classifying species (taxonomy) is dynamic and constantly changing. Only 30 per cent of the estimated 830,000 species in Australia and New Zealand have been described and named.

Call in the experts: Australia’s authorities on species names and classifications

The ALA uses a variety of authoritative lists for Australian taxa and these are used to build the names and taxonomic hierarchy applied to all occurrence records supplied to the ALA. The species name that data providers give to the ALA in occurrence records (supplied name) is matched to these lists and becomes the name (processed name) by which the record is displayed, matched and synthesised. This is so the vast amount of data supplied to the ALA can be aggregated and presented in a consistent and meaningful way.

These lists are built and maintained on behalf of the community by a number of key players that maintain the names and taxonomy of Australian flora and fauna; these are the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) working with the member institutions of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) and Council of Heads of Australian Faunal Collections (CHAFC) to provide national leadership for the discovery, naming and classification of Australia’s living organisms. It is their role to keep up to date with changes in taxonomy. The primary sources of name and taxonomic resources for Australian species come from the:

• Australian Faunal Directory (AFD) which provides the ALA with names and taxonomy for Australian fauna
• Australian Plant Name Index (APNI) and Australian Plant Census (APC) for Australian vascular plants
• AusFungi and AusMoss for fungi and mosses respectively.

The scope of these resources focuses on organisms found in Australia and surrounding waters, however as the ALA also includes occurrence records for organisms found in New Zealand, Antarctica, the South Pacific and many other places it also needs to incorporate other sources. Recently the New Zealand Organism Register has been included in this list.

Conservation lists

Each state and territory government, as well as the federal government and international bodies, maintain conservation species lists. The classifications within the lists are based on the categories provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature ranging from Least Concern, Near Threatened and Vulnerable through to Critically Endangered and Extinct, but there are some variations to category names in each state and territory. Each state and territory is responsible for providing up-to-date conservation information.

Spatial and environmental layers

In addition to names, taxonomy and conservation information, the ALA also needs authoritative reference lists for the environmental layers and geospatial mapping information used to visualise and interrogate data.

Spatial information such as geospatial references, specific boundaries of environmental protected areas, and state and territory boundaries enable ALA users to look at what species live in particularly defined areas. A key provider of this type of information is the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy.

Access to environment information, such as humidity, temperature and rainfall figures, enables ALA users to interrogate species occurrences by these environmental factors. For example, which species only occur in high rainfall areas, or alpine areas with high altitude, cold climate and complex topography. Two key providers of environmental information are Geoscience Australia and Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).

Species occurrence records

The ALA’s bread and butter is the 78.5 million (and growing) occurrence records. This information is provided by collections institutions (including museums and herbaria), government departments, researchers, community groups and individuals.

A few key players in each of the groups that provide occurrence records data to the ALA, include:

• the Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) which provides access to 6.8 million records from herbaria in all Australian states and territories and New Zealand
• the Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums (OZCAM) aggregates 5.1 million records from all Australian states and territories, plus the CSIRO National Collections
• BioNet, the Atlas of NSW Wildlife, contributes over 10 million records
• Bird Life Australia, Australia’s largest bird conservation organisation, has uploaded 13.6 million individual records
• a total of 84, 395 individual sightings have been uploaded directly to the ALA by citizen scientists; to view these, visit Recent sightings.

 ALA is the tip of the iceberg

Hopefully this brief summary of the ALA’s data providers sheds some light on the amount of information accessible via the ALA, and importantly explains that the ALA is a mere window into the vast, complex world of biodiversity science. The work of the organisations and institutions that provide data, and manage, curate and update that data, is fundamental to the success of the ALA.

This is an ode to our data providers – essentially, without them we’re nothing.

For more information, please view:

• Australia’s Natural History Collections on the ALA
• Occurrence record search on the ALA