NatureShare now shares its data with the Atlas of Living Australia

NatureShare observations are now being uploaded to the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). 

The ALA brings together flora and fauna records from Herabaria, Museums and other sources from all over Australia. The first upload from NatureShare occurred in April 2013 and included over 9000 observations.

So your records are now shared with a national database. Others can do research using your data in conjunction with other data sets. A large number of the photos from NatureShare are the only photos available for a considerable number of species on the Atlas. Some NatureShare records for some species are the only records for that species currently on the Atlas, or the only record for the Atlas in Victoria.

The team at the Atlas have been a pleasure to work with. They tell me that observations will be uploaded approximately monthly and that any changes made on NatureShare to old records will be found and changed on ALA too (eg. if observation no. 1234 is renamed on NatureShare, that change will be found in ALA's monthly upload). Some features of NatureShare were not available on the ALA site and they were open to incorporating some of NatureShare's unique features. As an example, full resolution versions of photos, so important in aiding ID, were not made available via the ALA website. I've just noticed that this feature is now available within individual records - see below ...

So it is great to know we are also helping the Atlas develop, and great to know they are so responsive.

The information uploaded from a NatureShare observation includes species name, date, location, photo if available, description, tags, copyright level (CC 2.5), a link to the original NatureShare observation, etc. Below is an example of a NatureShare observation in the ALA system ...

To search for your own data in the Atlas, from the ALA home page click on "Data sets" ...

On the next screen enter just "natureshare" to see all NatureShare data, or add your name as in the example below to see just your own data ...

The ALA site then gives you a list of all your records. The left and upper menu bar then gives you lots of options to further limit your search (eg. by council area) and you can also map your records.

Keep up the great work everyone!