Aims

This website has been set up to capture data from the huge amount of biological recording that already goes on around the University’s campuses; and to get new people involved in looking for and recording wildlife. Centralising this data will help us to learn more about the biodiversity of our campuses as well as contributing data to national recording schemes and so support conservation research and decision-making.

Background

The website has been designed using Indicia, an open-source and free toolkit for building websites for biological recording. The development of Indicia has been funded by the Open Air Laboratories project and managed by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Data sharing

Records submitted to the website are stored in a secure database and are archived daily. All records are accessible to anyone to view via this website and to download by registered users. They will also appear on iRecord – a recording website for the whole of the UK which also incorporates observations from other Indicia websites. Through iRecord, data are made available to organisations such as recording schemes and societies and Local Records Centres at full capture resolution to enable verification and sharing via the NBN Gateway. Data are also made freely publicly available, with the exception of sensitive records.

The goal of iRecord is to make it easier for wildlife sightings to be collates, checked by experts and made available to support research and decision-making at local and national levels. By contributing the records submitted to this website to iRecord, we can help with this process.

Contact

If you have any queries please contact us at opalproject@york.ac.uk