A Living Atlas is an informatics infrastructure that aggregates biodiversity data from multiple sources and makes it freely available and usable online. It is based on the Atlas of Living Australia platform and has been adopted since 2014 by numerous GBIF Nodes and other organizations to support integrated access and use of their national biological and environmental information. Its implementation at national level has been justified by the need to provide data services tailored to the specific needs of national users and communities at a level of detail not offered in international portals.

As all these countries and organizations share the same technology to make biodiversity data available, it makes perfect sense to synchronize efforts in producing documentation that can be useful for all of them. The Living Atlases Community has been working on improving the national atlases documentation for end-users during the last year. Efforts were focused in producing two video tutorials Fig. 1 about different components of the Atlas tools and practical online exercises about how to use these data portals. Resources are available in different languages so they can meet the needs of all users.

Figure 1.

Part of the key visual of the Living Atlases video tutorials

During this presentation, we will show the videos and make a demonstration of the documentation available. We will also present a draft roadmap for enhancing this important part of the community and collect inputs from participants in the symposium.

biodiversity data, Living Atlases, GBIF, open data, data portals, documentation

Cristina Villaverde

Biodiversity_Next 2019