Data quality is one of the most significant issues for the research community. Lee provided workshop participants with a background in how to use the ALA’s mapping and analysis tools to help identify issues and remove records from data so that it is ‘fit for purpose’. The ALA runs around 100 tests against all received data and sets flags if issues are detected. These flags are visible in the ALA and in downloaded data. 

Not all data issues can be detected by these tests but the tools within the ALA’s mapping and analysis portal are efficient in identifying most of the problems. If a species was originally misnamed and its location is found in an area of its correct name, then even an expert may have trouble recognising an issue, unless ancillary data (e.g. a quality photograph or field notes) is available. 

The workshops were well attended and participants were pleased with the content. A few comments from workshop attendees are provided below:

“Learned how to filter data – it works well for us OCD types.”

“My first use of the ALA – amazing tool for cleaning data.”

“Really well thought out and clearly presented.”

“Learning that this tool exists! It is amazing! It should be more widely known. Great job.”

“Lee was engaging and fun to listen to!”

“Clearly explained with good instructor and elaborate handout. It was good to go through each step.”

If you would like to attend the next workshop being held in Melbourne on 14 October 2016 go to Innovative tools for mapping and modelling species distributions.

If you would like to arrange a similar workshop suited to your requirements, please contact us.

In the coming months, we at the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) will be undertaking a User Experience review of www.ala.org.au in order to improve and refine the way that you use our site. Our main goal is to enhance your overall user experience.

But this is just the first of many steps. We will be making small and regular changes to the ALA using the continuous delivery methodology – this means releasing updates and improvements in short cycles. Our goal is to reduce the pain associated with large releases, to gain faster feedback from you, our users, and to offer incremental and continuous increases in the value of the ALA.

If you would like to ask us questions or to be part of the feedback process, contact the UI team at info@ala.org.au.

The MDBA collects large amounts of environment data in their role managing the water resources of the Murray–Darling Basin. They have hundreds of thousands of occurrence records for fish, aquatic insects, waterbirds and freshwater algae collected as far back as 1976. This offers a comprehensive picture of how species are distributed across the Murray–Darling Basin.

The new ALA data hub provides the MDBA with robust infrastructure to manage biodiversity data storage, visualisation and collection. It makes analysis and reporting faster and easier, and makes the data publicly accessible, so people can explore which species have been found in a particular region.

“ALA is the largest aggregator of biodiversity information in Australia, and they have the expertise in data management to help us make the most of our data,” said MDBA Project Manager Dr Katrina Phillips.

“The ALA hub also lets us view and analyse our data based on our unique spatial planning regions. For example, we can choose to view data for a specific wetland or for a water resource planning area.”

MDBA’s biodiversity data is now freely accessible through the hub interface, in accordance with the Australian Government’s open data policy. The data is also integrated into the larger repository of ALA data. The benefits of this are twofold. Firstly, MDBA staff can now search ALA data in their catchment area, in addition to MDBA data. Secondly, ALA users can now search data collected by MDBA within the larger pool of ALA data, further enriching the information available.

“We’re really happy to have our data available in this format, it makes our work a lot easier and means we can share this important data with other interested audiences,’ said Dr Phillips.

For more details, visit the MDBA Hub.

If you are interested in establishing an ALA hub for your organisation, please contact our Data Management Team.

GovHack is an annual open data competition where teams have 46 hours to create a project page, proof of concept and a video showing how government open data can be reused.

Now in its sixth year, GovHack has seen many different innovative projects from web apps, data visualisations and virtual reality games, to 3D models, art, jewellery, and board games.

The ALA data set was listed within the NCRIS Research Data and Infrastructure Group. Other government department and agency data was also available.

Projects created using ALA data are listed below. Click on the links to see project details and videos.

• Bringing Data to the Table educational table and chairs using biodiversity and topography data and 3D printing.
• Creature Wise twitterbot to tell you what could be living nearby.
• GaiaXplorers app to help you explore the Aussie natural world and compete with your friends.
• Ausémon mobile app in the style of Pokémon Go that highlights the animals you might see along the Canberra Centenary Trail.
• Finding Forgotten Fauna plug-in and data entry portal linking ALA and Trove to harness the power of citizen scientists and digitise historic accounts of Australian fauna.
• CRITRS augmented reality mobile game linking landmarks and wildlife.
• Threat.End gamified flora and fauna education and citizen science mobile app focussed on threatened species.
• Wildsnap open source virtual reality educational app that allows players to catch and collect endangered species.
• The Outdoor Experience app for families and individuals to plan their outdoor experience, access dynamic and relevant content and report their findings.
• Put a bird on it ringtone and notification sounds of local Australian birds to download on to your own device.
• Piccohunt social game to encourage players to take and upload images of biodiversity.
• Native Go augmented reality experience that allows you to interact in real time with native flora and fauna using your mobile device.
• walkED app to help plan a journey and map it with biodiversity information.
• What lives here? app to enable data collection from nesting box sensors across Australia.
• Wilderness Buddy an app to help tourists explore Victoria’s national parks and wildlife.
• WalkaboutAus! a fun quiz game for visitors to Melbourne to play as they explore features of interest around the city.
• WINE The Wine Industry National Explorer provides growers, potential employees, students, policy makers, investors and researchers a valuable, intuitive visual tool for analysis of open datasets of relevance to grape growing.

There are some great ideas here and we wish all the teams good luck! Prizes and awards will be announced for each state and territory in September and the national awards night will be held in Adelaide on October 22nd.

We had a full program, with many stimulating talks. With thanks to the authors who have made them available, copies of the presentations can be found HERE. Some presentations contained information that has not yet been published and for this reason cannot be made public at this stage.

This is our third Science Symposium, and it seems to me that each year they just get better.  Not only have we had a great deal of positive feedback on the quality and enthusiasm of the various participants – but the range of topics and ways the ALA is supporting people and activities seems to grow every year.  Again this year one of the main successes of the Symposium was seeing how the Atlas community is coming together and is excited about our shared future.  As stimulating as the presentations and discussions were, the sense of excitement I saw in the room during the breaks was even more impressive.  Everywhere there were lively discussions, interested people getting more information from presenters, and various networks being formed to develop and progress some of the emerging ideas.

Thank you to everyone who helped make the 2016 Atlas of Living Australia Science Symposium such a success.  This includes presenters, moderators, the Atlas staff who worked so hard at the organisation – but also all the participants who contributed through attending and creating such a lively atmosphere.  This high level of community engagement is compelling evidence of a strong future for the Atlas.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at our next Symposium!

John La Salle

Users will recognise a change to the look and feel of the species pages, and major improvements to the search and quality of results on our species lists.

The focus was to update the naming system and bring it up to speed with the key authoritative sources, namely: the Australian Plant Name Index (APNI), Australian Plant Census (APC) and the Australian Faunal Directory from the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) as well as Australian Fungi, Australian Mosses Online, Australian Codes of Aquatic Biota, Catalogue of Life, and the New Zealand Organisms Register.

This was a major piece of work requiring a complete rewrite of some of the ALA’s original software. The major benefits to users will be an improvement to the quality of species information. In addition, duplicate records have been removed and, where possible, links to the original source data have been included.

Naming and classification of biological organisms (taxonomy) is one of the most fundamental streams of science. It aims to provide a complete list of all living organisms on the planet and their relationships to eachother. By establishing a common language for all organisms and their taxonomic categories, it enables scientists across the globe to communicate and collaborate effectively.

It’s easy to think that a list of names is more or less set in stone but taxonomy is surprisingly dynamic and changes occur frequently. The ALA upgrade makes it easier for us to update our species lists on a regular basis. As a result, we can keep the ALA species lists up-to-date with developments or changes in taxonomic science.

This is a major change and so we won’t be surprised if users encounter some (not many!) issues in the first few weeks after release. Please contact us if you need assistance.

Many thanks to all our colleagues at ABRS, APNI, APC, the Council of Heads of Australiasian Herbaria (CHAH), as well as Tom May and Niels Klazenga at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.

Traditional land management practices and Indigenous knowledge about plants, animals and the environment are connected with people, place and culture. This knowledge has developed over thousands of years and offers critical insights for managing the environment today. The ALA is exploring the role of information management platforms in bridging the boundaries between traditional Indigenous knowledge and western science.

The ALA’s IEK program of work recognises the essential nature of a participatory approach, and aims to provide tools to enable greater Indigenous participation in biodiversity information management and assessment, and to support other aspirations of Indigenous people related to ecological or biodiversity knowledge. We currently partner in two IEK projects, one in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory and one in Cape York, Queensland. Both projects are exploring two-way knowledge sharing and learning between traditional land custodians and the ALA.

This week the ALA is conducting a sprint (a software development work phase) to install the following improvements to the ALA’s website in response to feedback from the Olkola (Cape York) and Ngukurr (Arnhem Land) community users.

1. Introduction of specific spatial layers into the ALA’s mapping and analysis tools.
2. Modifications to the Species Profiles app to upload multi-media files and to improve useability.
3. Addition of a tab and other modifications on ALA Species pages to enable Indigenous stories, Indigenous language names and multimedia to be displayed.

The ALA hopes to collaborate with more Indigenous communities across Australia to foster two-way engagement in biodiversity knowledge.

For more information on the ALA’s IEK work, visit our blogs on the Yugul Mangi Rangers and the Olkola People.

On Thursday June 23, the ALA’s Director, Dr John La Salle, will be bracing himself for another night on the streets in a cold Canberra winter for Vinnie’s CEO Sleepout.

The Vinnie’s CEO Sleepout invites Australian CEOs and community leaders to experience homeless life for one night in winter to raise awareness about homelessness and raise funds to help break the cycle of homelessness in our community.

John has raised over $8,000 over the last two years and is looking forward to breaking his $4,000 target this year.

Donate here to support John. Donations are tax deductible..

Thanks very much for your support – and feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Dr Gráinne Cleary from Deakin University’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences, recently published Australia’s largest ever study into the use of urban and rural bird baths in private gardens.

The study investigated bird baths in 13 different regions across Australia, from south-eastern Queensland to southern South Australia, and was made possible with the help of almost 1000 citizen scientists and the ALA’s data collection tools.

The study found that native birds such as Superb Fairy Wrens, Grey Fantails, Lewin’s and New Holland Honeyeaters were recorded more frequently at rural bird baths. Whereas introduced species such as Spotted Doves, Common Blackbirds and House Sparrows were seen more frequently at urban bird baths. Overall, the number of different species was greater in rural bird baths compared to urban ones.

This study also demonstrated the valuable contribution that citizen scientists can make to studies that require large amounts of data to be gathered across a large area.

After advertising through local media and Facebook and engaging with ornithological associations across Australia, a total of 992 citizen scientists contributed data to the study. Each person was required to observe their bird bath for 20 minutes, three times per week, for a total of eight weeks over summer 2014 and winter 2015. They then logged their sightings online through the ALA. Participants were given a field guide to help identify species and were also able to email photos and descriptions of birds to ensure correct identification.

The study was published in Avian Assemblages at Bird Baths: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Bird Baths in Australia in Plos One, March 2016.

Since the Bathing Birds project was run, the ALA has updated it’s data collection tools making it easier for people to run their own projects. If you are interested in becoming a citizen scientist or setting up your own citizen science project, visit the ALA’s BioCollect page.

These ALA symposiums are proving to be an excellent way to meet up with our users and partners and to discuss opportunities for improvement and further collaboration. At each symposium I am impressed by the diversity of research, industry and community groups that engage with and enrich ALA content.

Thank you to our colleagues at WA’s Department of Parks and Wildlife for their hospitality and providing such a great venue. Thank you also to the presenters, moderators, contributors, our hard-working ALA staff, and all the delegates, for making this such a successful event.

Look forward to seeing you all at the next one!

John La Salle

Director, Atlas of Living Australia