GIS Data for Biodiversity

Global Biodiversity Facility

From the web site: “The GBIF Network already provides access to over 40 million records of occurrences of different organisms. Many of these relate to specimens in natural history museums and herbaria around the world, or to living cultures of micro-organisms, but at least a third come from observations of wild organisms. Wherever possible these records include information about the locality where the organisms were found and are used to generate maps of the distribution of these occurrences. Counts of occurrence records are listed against the organism names to which they apply. For genera and taxa of higher ranks, these counts include only those occurrences which have been identified to the taxon concerned. For species these counts include all occurrences for the species and also for any included infraspecific taxa, as well as for any known synonyms.”

 NatureServe

Animal and plant distribution GIS data downloads, as well as a wide range of other information and data from NatureServe, a non-profit that works to collect and distribute information for a network of heritage programs and conservation data centers around the world. Go to the Get Data link.

Other efforts to digitize and georeference museum collection specimens:

  • Fishnet (Fish Network Information System)
  • MaNIS (Mammal Network Information System)
  • ORNIS (Ornithological Network Information System)
  • HerpNet (Herpetological Network) – reptiles and amphibians
  • OBIS (Ocean Biogeographic Information System) – for marine animals and plants