In the UK there is an enormous amount of biodiversity information that has been gathered over the years by all sorts of organisations and individuals. Most of these people are volunteers who organise themselves through many national and local societies and recording schemes. The UK government (through its conservation and environmental agencies), local government and non-government wildlife-related organisations all collect and use biodiversity data. One of the principal means of collation and interpretation of this data is the network of local records centres and at the national level, the Biological Records Centre that collates and interprets data from national recording schemes.
This information is vital if we are to understand the distribution and abundance of species and habitats; without it, making informed decisions on how to protect the UKs wildlife is much more difficult.
Whilst a huge amount of information exists, it is held in a variety of formats by many different organisations, which means that it isnt always easy to access. The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) however, is making as much of the information as possible available to everyone who needs it and one way it does this is through its website - the NBN Gateway. The NBN Gateway quite simply acts as a data warehouse for biodiversity information, which can be quickly and easily accessed to understand the distribution of particular species in the UK. Individual records, covering plants, mammals, birds and invertebrates, are stored on the NBN Gateway and these can then be displayed on a map of the UK in a number of different ways.
Visit www.nbn.org.uk for more information on the NBN and www.searchnbn.net for the NBN Gateway.