Hi folks, Here are the responses to my query on databases and electronic field guides for biological field stations, cut and pasted from the original messages.
Check out iNaturalist (http://www.inaturalist.org/). It has been amazingly successful and useful for crowd sourcing biodiversity info. The Shoals Lab has an app., in the future, we hope that users will be able to record data as well--the app is in it's infancy at this time. Also contact the folks at the Census of Marine Life (http://www.coml.org/) --perhaps they can help. The Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre in British Columbia has developed a Biodiversity Database http://biodiv.bms.bc.ca/ Check BFREE in Belize: http://www.bfreebz.org/ They have a huge database and they may know of a good program. I am sure you are aware of the awesome caterpillar database used by your neighbours at Area de Conservacion Guanacaste: http://janzen.sas.upenn.edu/caterpillars/database.lasso I believe this is a web interface for a FileMaker backend. If you are looking for something to collect data, you are welcome to try out a field data entry database we created for the International Barcode of Life Project: http://ibol.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iBOL-_data_v300.xls.zip The link below to a presentation outlining some of the key features and structure of this table: http://vimeo.com/10091052 A colleague of mine has cataloged some of the trees he's planted in the Upper Amazon - nice little search engine with pictures. http://www.caminoverde.org/resources - then to the tree database. As for a biodiversity survey, I have a nice report of what's sold in the Belen (Iquitos) Market. The idea was to set a baseline for future study. I did a basic translation and Devon Graham reconciled many of the species with scientific names. If you or others are interested, email me offline. -Don Dean [email protected]. There is the Atlas of Living Australia (http://www.ala.org.au/). They have a tool that allows you to select an area and download the records within (http://biocache.ala.org.au/explore/your-area) . Registered users can also upload sightings using a mobile phone app. The code for the Atlas is open source and available at http://code.google.com/p/ala/ The Atlas of Living Australia uses Darwin Core http://code.google.com/p/darwincore and other groups have developed extensions for species interactions including pollination. Other developers including the Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid use the Plinian Core http://code.google.com/p/pliniancore/ for coding natural history and species interaction information. Regina Bledsoe [email protected] wrote: I am an environmental biology undergrad at Nicholls State University. I developed a simple Access database to track basic info and pictures I take of birds, insects, reptiles, and other organisms I encounter. The database is setup for basic info such as common name, scientific name, date, longitude, latitude, notes, and pictures. You can also assign multiple pictures to a sighting record. The way I typically run it is from an external drive so I can use it on any pc with Access. I stored coordinates with the intent of integrating mapping at some point. Recently, I learned of ARCgis online and was able to create csv files from querying the database. I can drag and drop the files onto an Arc map to add layers. Arcgis online is a free service, you only need to create an account. Here is a link to a test map I created: http://bit.ly/X4TpR0 . If you click on show map contents, second button under the details button on the far left, you will see the different files I dropped in which appears as a check box and name under contents. I’m not sure if this solution is sophisticated enough for your needs, but I thought it might be worth sharing since you mentioned you checked into Access as a possible solution. If anything it may be a good foundation to build on. Let me know if you have any questions or would be interested in checking out the Access database and I can send it along. Paul Foster Director Reserva Ecologica Bijagual Sarapiqui, Costa Rica
