The ‘Atlas of Living Australia’ comes to life - Spatial Source
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-08-09
Summary:
"n a new project designed to document species and share traditional Aboriginal names and knowledge of plants and animals, Aboriginal community members of Arnhem Land are leading the way in sharing biodiversity knowledge.
The Yirralka, Numbirindi and Yugul Mangi Rangers of eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory are working with Macquarie University scientists to develop new tools for biodiversity assessment that can be applied across Australia.
The data collected will then be analysed, communicated and recorded in the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), a national biodiversity open data service hosted by CSIRO. Currently users can use the database to perform location-based or species-based searches. As of August 2017, there are 73 million data entries comprising 119,095 species of flora and fauna. The ALA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License, and as a result has seen a huge 1.4 million data downloads.
By adding the local knowledge of Aboriginal custodians to ALA, users of the data will have access to unique insights for how we understand and manage the Australian environment. The challenge is recording and sharing this information to support good land management decisions."