State-of-the-art bridge from FinBIF to GBIF
The data sharing methods from the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GBIF, were renewed – the amount of shared data has now increased to more than 70 datasets and over 35 million observations.
The data of the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) are now automatically shared via API to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). With the new data sharing method, a laborious phase is not needed anymore, as the metadata of the datasets no longer needs to be stored manually in GBIF's data sharing service, but is automatically copied from the metadata service of the FinBIF. Previously the FinBIF had shared only about 15 major observation datasets to the GBIF. As a result of the new API sharing method, the number of datasets shared to GBIF increased to 76, with a total of more than 35 million observations.
There is an increasing need for biodiversity information in preparation for worsening environmental crises such as climate change and nature decline. To ensure the effective use of species information, it is imperative that the data are not left for national use alone. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network and a biodiversity information sharing infrastructure open to all – like the FinBIF, but worldwide. In 2021, more than 1,300 peer-reviewed scientific articles were published based on GBIF data.
The data sharing has been technically implemented using open source software and is freely available for reuse by others. The FinBIF to GBIF software bridge synchronises metadata and occurrence data nightly and serves FinBIF datasets as Darwin Core archives.
Now that the technical functionality of the data sharing has been tested with the datasets of the FinBIF and the Finnish Museum of Natural History, the data sharing will also be extended to the datasets of other Finnish natural history museums.
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More information:
- Kari Lahti
- kari.lahti@helsinki.fi
- William Morris (technical contact)
- william.morris@helsinki.fi