A collaborative global freshwater biodiversity data hub

The aim of this data portal, which was established in the framework of the BioFresh project, and further developed under the Freshwater Information Platform (FIP), is to enable freshwater biodiversity data publishing and to increase the visibility of such data. The data portal, together with other FIP publishing options, forms a unique freshwater biodiversity data hub.

Currently, the portal provides access to authoritative global species lists through FADA as well as to occurrence data mobilised during the BioFresh project, through follow-up activities, and harvested from Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Results can be displayed either as occurrence points or in density grids.

Please be aware that – with the exception of the FIP metadatabase components – developments after 2014 have focussed on publishing and attracting new data, which have been published on the FIP Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) and are now included in the GBIF network, while the database underlying this website has not been updated.

Publishing your data on freshwater biodiversity

The FIP Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal offers different options of publishing freshwater occurrence and related data. Basically, we recommend the following publishing steps:

1. Publish metadata in the Freshwater Metadatabase online.
2. Publish these data as paper in the Freshwater Metadata Journal (FMJ).
3. Publish occurrence records via the FIP Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), which exposes the data to the GBIF Freshwater Network (see details below).
4. Additionally, analysed data and spatial results can be published in the Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas.

A more detailed step-by-step manual can be downloaded here.

Searching datasets, species and occurrences

The data portal offers searches for:

• Information on datasets (metadata): search for datasets covering a specific environment, geographical area or organism group, or containing a specific keyword. – Go to the Freshwater Metadatabase pages and use either the metadatabase query tool or the full text search.
• Information on species: search species within an organism group, a particular genus or faunistic region and view synonyms, distribution information and conservation status. Note that this section was not recently updated. – Go to species search.
• Species occurrence data: visualise and download species observations or specimens point data available through GBIF and Freshwater Biodiversity Data Portal/BioFresh. – Go to occurrence search.

The GBIF Freshwater Network

To create more visibility for the published freshwater occurrence data and also to easily find data for freshwater research, we have – in close collaboration with the GBIF secretariat – created the Freshwater Network on GBIF. This network aims to collaborate with all freshwater data publishing institutions to pool freshwater occurrence data within one place on GBIF.

If you are a freshwater data publishing unit please contact us at data(a)freshwaterplatform.eu to get connected to the network.

If you are a scientist and want to publish your data through the FIP (BioFresh) IPT and connect them to the GBIF Freshwater Network, organise your data according the Freshwater Core Template and send them to data(a)freshwaterplatform.eu. More information on submitting data can be found here.