|
When a user visits the CBIF portal and clicks on "Online Mapping", he or she is taken to a page (the URL given above) that has three links.
The first of these allows a user who does not have any specialised geographic information systems (GIS) knowledge to utilise the web mapping service (WMS) that CBIF has created. This service uses a world map that is provided as open source by Demis, a company based in the Netherlands. The CBIF service will plot the distribution of one to several species against this map (see large image). The data that are used are provided to the analytical computer in Canada through the GBIF portal, located in Denmark.
The user can choose the shape and color of symbol to be used for each species. The search requires that scientific names be used, but one can search the GBIF names data to find the scientific name that corresponds to a common name. The "Help on Icons" link below the map explains the use of the various buttons on the left side of the map.
The next link leads to the "Generic Point Mapper", which is a tool that anyone can use to generate his or her own dynamic map (similar to the one seen in the "Map GBIF Occurrence Data" link). These interactive maps allow a user to zoom in or out, to reposition the center of the map, and the like. Users can access this tool to build such maps for their own websites.
Finally, the actual WMS that underlies the "Map GBIF Occurrence Data" service can be accessed by programmers and developers who do have specialised GIS knowledge and wish to add GBIF species occurrence layers to other online GIS applications.
There is a full explanation available within the site about how to use each of these tools.
GBIF congratulates the team at CBIF (Guy Baillargeon, Derek Munro and Françoise Guilbault) for this contribution to GBIF network capabilities.
|
