Citizen Science Case Studies

Data flow

Data shared in iNaturalist have an established data flow in the UK and beyond, something which The Rock Pool Project was keen to utilise for their data to maximise the reusability of their data.

Research Grade records from iNaturalist are passed on to iRecord where they undergo an expert verification stage before being shared with the NBN. The NBN are the UK node of GBIF and share all records onto GBIF, to be used globally. The NBN also share all marine records with DASSH (the UK Archive for Marine Species and Habitats Data, and the UK Node of the Ocean Biodiversity Information System)). DASSH publish the records to their mapper, and also share the records onwards to the global OBIS, and to EMODnet. Discovery metadata are published from DASSH to the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Portal to enable findability.

Sharing/Reporting

Every month an email is sent to Natural England with direct links to data for non-native species. This helps to update England’s non-native species list and to receive quick alerts of new invasive non-native species. The Rock Pool are hoping to expand that to other organisations soon, including reporting results to the South West Marine Ecosystems group (SWME) and similar networks.