New NMW partner – The India Biodiversity Portal (IBP)

By Thomas Vattakaven

The India Biodiversity Portal (IBP) was launched, to establish an open access biodiversity information platform for India to address the issue of biodiversity information not being openly available. The portal aims to establish a collaborative information system that will aggregate and ntegrate an array of biodiversity knowledge available with several entities in order to identify and prioritize conservation of biodiversity in India.

The portal currently consists of the Observation, Map, Species pages and document modules. The Observation module is a citizen science initiative seeking to collect geo-referenced biodiversity information from the civil society. Identified observations are linked back to detailed information available through the Species pages and the location information is served out through distribution maps. The Map module is also a fully functional webGIS module, through which an extensive collection of curated content is made freely available for display and download. The portal also hosts a variety of documents compiled from important biodiversity regions across the India. All content shared through the portal is made openly available under a Creative Commons licence framework. The portal currently has more than 12,000 species pages, 23,000 observations, 300 Documents, 200 map layers and 3900 users.

The portal also has a facility to create Groups which are micro-sites based on any taxonomic or geographical theme and to include any content from the above modules into it, that is relevant to the group theme. Information submitted to groups will automatically be a part of the mother portal. IndianMoths is such a group on IBP catering to collection and dissemination of information on the Moths of India with over 2700 observations already submitted. Efforts are on to populate the group with descriptive information on the moths of India.

By aggregating and making available, a comprehensive database for all kinds of information available on India and involving large-scale public participation, the portal hopes to evolve a greater understanding of the region and its ecosystem and facilitate a knowledge base for stakeholders across the region, especially those involved with research, conservation and policy making. It hopes that such an effort will help bridge knowledge gaps, identify conservation strategies and facilitate informed management policies.

National Moth Participants – Please upload your observations of  Indian Moths here by clicking “Contribute” and then “add an observation”. You may also submit lists by clicking “add a list”

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