Where are we missing biodiversity data? A hunger map is a map of missing biodiversity data (a biodiversity data gap). The main challenge with hunger mapping is proving that a species does not exist but should exist in a region. Hunger maps are important because they could be used to prioritize funding and digitization efforts. Currently, GBIF has no way of telling what species are missing from where. In this blog post I review some potential ways GBIF could make global biodiversity hunger maps.

Citizen science Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur (or non-professional) scientists. Biodiversity observations by citizen scientists have become significant in the last 10 years thanks to projects like: eBird iNaturalist Artportalen Sweden Artsdatabanken Norway Southern African Bird Atlas Bird Life Austrailia Dansk Ornitologisk Forening Great Back Yard Bird Count Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur (or non-professional) scientists.

Not all filters are born equal It happens sometimes that users need GBIF data that fall within specific boundaries. The GBIF Portal provides a location filter where it is possible to draw a rectangle or a polygon on the map and get the occurrence records within this shape. However these tools have a limited precision and occasionally the job calls for more complex shapes than the GBIF Portal currently supports.

This blog post covers the publication of multimedia on GBIF. However, it is not intended to be documentation. For more information, please check the references below. NB: GBIF does not host original multimedia files and there is no way to upload pictures to the platform. For more information, please read the how to publish paragraphs. Media displayed on the GBIF portal Let’s say that you are looking for pictures of otters, or perhaps the call of a sea eagle.

Can we automatically label citizen science datasets? The short answer is yes, partially. Why label GBIF datasets as “citizen science”? What is citizen science? Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur (or non-professional) scientists. Citizen science is sometimes described as “public participation in scientific research,” participatory monitoring, and participatory action research (wikipedia definition). Citizen science on GBIF A 2016 study showed that nearly half of all occurrence records shared through the GBIF network come from datasets with significant volunteer contributions (for more information, see our “citizen science” page on gbif.