The Atlas of Living Australia is a newly launched website that aims to catalog Australia’s biodiversity, providing a site for researchers and others to access, combine and visualize data on the country’s animals, fungi, microorganisms and plants. The project is a six-year scientific collaboration between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian museum community and the Australian Government. The government has provided $38.2 million in funding through 2012, with an estimated $26.5 million in in-kind contributions from partner organizations.
“Much of the data that the Atlas will be delivering will have a spatial component; a link to a location where for example a species has been observed or an environment has been sampled in some way. An Atlas is inherently spatial. This places great emphasis on developing a ‘spatial portal‘ that is intuitive to use and effective in delivering and capturing a wide range of information about Australia’s living things.” – Lee Belbin – Geospatial Team Leader
The site offers many mapping options, including a mapping tool that lets you search, analyze and combine biodiversity and environmental data, and you can view and create a species map. The mapping tools provide the ability to view and combine multiple geospatial data layers, and offer the means to incorporate this data into other GIS systems through the use of OGC Web Feature Service and Web Coverage Service interfaces.
The site is a continuing work in progress, with plans to add many more data sets and linkages. While the site has primarily engaged research scientitists and naturalists to date, there are tools to engage citizens and a citizen science component to the effort.
