The National Biodiversity Network


The National Biodiversity Network is a collaboration between over 180 member organisations, overseen by the NBN Trust. The NBN Trust employs a dedicated Secretariat to create and maintain online research tools and a sophisticated search engine - the NBN Atlas - to facilitate sharing of the vast amount of biodiversity information generated by member organisations, individuals and recording societies throughout the UK - including GCER.



Data sharing


The NBN Atlas allows organisations to share their data publicly, using agreed data standards, and link it to the wider picture of biodiversity distribution as part of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Data Providers such as GCER prepare records for the NBN according to well-established standards and where possible package the data using the same Darwin Core standard format which is used internationally for storing high-quality biological data.

Records on the NBN Atlas may be viewed by anyone with access to an internet connection. Data may be shown on a map and analysed using the NBN Atlas tools, or used with external web mapping services, or simply downloaded in text file format for use in research. This is particularly useful for students and academic researchers who need UK-wide datasets for their research.

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Our NBN Datasets


GCER aims to make specific batches of records in our main database available on the NBN as time and resources permit. The public resolution (i.e. level of geographic detail) is usually 1km square. This enables students, researchers, members of the public and recording organisations to see the distribution of species records in our county, use the basic NBN records freely, and identify any areas where they might want to ask GCER for more details.

Current GCER data on the NBN Atlas: