Forum — Mapping

Using NBN Atlas API/WMS with ArcGIS

null@example.com (r.stock) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:51:57 +0000

Dear NBN,

We have received a few queries from NBN Atlas users about using the NBN Atlas API or Web Map Services in ArcGIS. Whilst we are aware of the FSC tool available in QGIS, we are not aware of any tools which have been built for ArcGIS or use cases of using the NBN Atlas API or WMS with ArcGIS.

Unfortunately, the NBN Atlas data team do not have access to a ArcGIS license, and so are unable to investigate this ourselves. We would really appreciate if you have used the NBN Atlas API or WMS with ArcGIS if you would please share your experience/guidance with us, so that we can share these with the wider NBN community.

Please feel free to reply to this post or email us at support@nbnatlas.org

Thank you.

Lat Long conversion issue?

null@example.com (DavidM) — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:17:06 +0000

I was checking some of my records in QGIS and loaded them using Sample.Lat and Sample.Long as the coordinates. However all the records are displaced about 80m to the ENE. See the image. The records near to Chanonry Lighthouse were not there but in the roundabout shown to the west. All the records shown along Ness Road where actually along the coastline at a similar displacement. So from the Sample table, Recorder converted NH74855566 to and Lat and Long of 57.573873558833, -4.09286931177761 which not where NH74855566 is. If I convert the same grid reference at https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/data/webservi … gToLatLng, I get a lat and long of 57.573610, -4.094247 which is correct.

Scratchpads - gone

null@example.com (Darwyn Sumner) — Mon, 15 May 2023 10:48:11 +0000

Recording Schemes use a variety of systems as their home websites. Many of them ably assisted by BRC.
One choice for several of us was the NHM supported Scratchpad system. Used by 8 of the 30 Dipterists Forum Recording Schemes for example but also by Coleopterists and Arachnologists and a wide range of others around the world.
This was an "enterprise scale" project - the kind of cash that BRC or NBNt could only dream of.
The project will be shut down in September, sites will no longer be editable, just frozen
Details of this closure may be found on the GBIF Forum at https://discourse.gbif.org/t/scratchpads-scratched/3932
The international response has been considerable and a group has been formed to determine the best ways forward in an attempt by Scratchpad site managers to seek means of continuing the editability of their sites.
Two of our active sites are https://micropezids.myspecies.info/ and https://agromyzidae.myspecies.info/

Any expressions of support would be most welcome

BRC vs NBN Atlas

null@example.com (Darwyn Sumner) — Fri, 12 May 2023 17:28:43 +0000

BRC had Rich Burmar improve the iRecord mapping and they look pretty good now.
However these maps only display some of the records, just those held on iRecord/Indicia.
They omit the Open Data on NBN Atlas.
Compare these two maps:
iRecord https://irecord.org.uk/species-details? … _id=192910
My latest map https://micropezids.myspecies.info/site … 202022.jpg which includes all iRecord + NBN Atlas + iNaturalist +scheme submissions
The latter will be shown on NBN Atlas too as I've updated my Recording Scheme records from all sources. Mine's pretty as I did it in QGIS but the NBN Atlas one is not quite so pretty.

Why are BRC and NBN competing in this way with data from two different silos, one of which is clearly data poor and thus gives a completely inaccurate picture.

I've discussed NBN Atlas atlases before (https://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=7719) and been assured that they'd like to improve their mapping
This is a major Open Data issue. Any publication citing BRC data/maps alone will lack rigour

Darwyn Sumner

GBIF Biodiversity Open Data Ambassador

FSC Biodiversity Forum - gone

null@example.com (Darwyn Sumner) — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 06:43:31 +0000

Did you ever visit that bulletin board forum? Set up I think by Charles Roper at FSC as part of their Biolonks project. Not overwhelmingly busy (we've only 166 messages on mapping here) but a nice design and packed with useful tips about QGIS and Rich Burkmar's various toolkit for mapping, their Identikit and even some iRecord help topics.
The Biolinks project ended in December 2022 and Field Studies Council shut it down.
I still use it for reference so I made enquiries when I couldn't find it any more when looking for words of wisdom from Charles and Rich
FSC are in the process of finalising the transfer of Biolinks resources to their website, but a bulletin board doesn't lend itself to such a process I think.
Here's the message I have from the FSC team:

Jen wrote:

Thank you for getting back to me.
I don’t think I realised in your initial email that it was a forum run by BioLinks – whilst I’m unsure of the technicalities behind transferring this I assume as the project has now come to an end, there isn’t any scope to do this. The transferring of information over that I mentioned before was related to blogs posted by BioLinks.
It does sound like it was an invaluable resource, so I can only apologies that this has closed without little/no warning.
I’m not entirely sure what your options are from here, particularly as you seem much more knowledge in bulletin boards than I do. Is there scope for you to begin your own? You seem well versed in how to run them and certainly have the appropriate knowledge of Natural History to encourage usage. I appreciate you’ve probably already thought about this, but I’m happy to provide words of encouragement if that’s the only thing holding you back.

I don't think I have the time or quite the expertise to run it again. There are also surely some small costs.
Is anyone else interested in taking it on? I'm guessing from the reply that it could be handed over for someone else to run. Perhaps slightly repurposed to fulfil needs of NBN (this entire mapping section), NFBR, LRCs (they do a lot of QGIS mapping) or Recording Schemes (several more Dipterist RS are interested in QGIS)

Expressions of interest please, I can email you the FSC thread if you contact me

Darwyn

Grid ref to VC

null@example.com (Darwyn Sumner) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 14:41:09 +0000

I used to find the converter at https://www.cucaera.co.uk/grid-ref-to-vice-county/ extraordinarily useful.
Paste a bunch of comma-separated grid references into the top box and you'd get a copyable list of VCs back.
Great for data extraction work like that I'm doing on Steve Falk's records.
The site has now flipped to "text-only" which I'd normally put down to my cache, but clearing it has no effect.
Any advice please?

Licence conditions for maps exported from the Atlas?

null@example.com (David Hepper) — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 14:47:52 +0000

Despite Darwyn's gloomy take on the state of mapping, if we did want to export maps directly from NBN-A, to illustrate a public talk for example, what are the licence conditions on the map underlay (not the records)? I don't see anything in the help doc for Export or Download Map.

Putting the Atlas into NBN Atlas

null@example.com (Darwyn Sumner) — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 19:00:12 +0000

Everyone likes a spotty map. So following a huge push to increase our open data uploads to NBN Atlas I thought to encourage further efforts by demonstrating how simple and straightforward it would be for a naturalist to take a look at UK distribution maps of species of their choice.
The options available are as follows:
1. Easymaps
2. Interactive Map (NBN Atlas default)
3. Spatial Portal (an option available at 2.)
4. DMap
5. QGIS (with or without FSC’s Tombio tools)
6. iNaturalistUK/iRecord
7. Scratchpads (NHM)
8. Recording applications
9. GBIF
A most unsatisfactory list. 1. was designed for NBN Gateway and though it still works the image is extraordinarily poor. 2. is slow and confusing, has the wrong projection and is feature poor. 3. is hardly better with far too many steps to get to a map and has no acceptable background layers (overprinted with enormous text) and cannot produce a usable image. 4. and 5. are only usable by Recording Schemes who produce their own Atlases and have the skills. Very labour intensive as they require data downloads but they can be done to international standards (which include UK) such as those for map presentation, projection & chloropleths by TDWG and EEA (Lillethun, 2011). The data for 6. are in unconnected silos and thus incomprehensive. 7. has little notion of biogeography but can support hand-selecting of strange geospatial shapes (same as iNaturalist). 8. don’t have GIS, just basic mapping utilities. Finally GBIF has few mapping facilities, their default is a strange projection.

I’ve now abandoned the idea of writing an article for Dipterists Forum’s Bulletin on this Atlas topic. No feedback to recorders via spotty maps.

Are there plans for improvements?

Darwyn Sumner
GBIF Biodiversity Open Data Ambassador

List of Hectads for each Country?

null@example.com (David Hepper) — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 11:31:42 +0000

I'm wanting to check my dragonfly database for unsurveyed squares. Does anyone have a list of hectads with at least a corner on shore, please, for each country of GB?

Dandy Maps

null@example.com (charliebarnes) — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 09:36:35 +0000

The report on the digitization of the vice-county boundaries suggests that JPGs of the original Dandy Maps were made available.

For these reasons the project has included the preparation of a set of digital images of the 'Dandy Maps' at medium high resolution.

The overlain Dandy Map images were originally intended to be released as a set of PDF documents but this format has proved to involve a number of practical problems because of the size of the images. It has, instead, been decided to render each map as a jpeg image which can then be loaded and manipulated into standard graphics and photo management software.

I can't seem to find my original CD to check if they were included on that and they aren't available for download from the NBN website.

Does anyone know if they were included on the CD or where/who to contact to get them?

MySQL Generated Columns OSGB to WGS84

null@example.com (dgreves) — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 17:30:37 +0000

Hi. Does anyone have experience of converting OS grid refs to lat/long using MySQL generated columns functionality? Or is this a foolish thing to attempt? :-)

Getting Historic Environment Scotland sites onto the NBN

null@example.com (grahamcheckley) — Sat, 08 Oct 2016 06:28:22 +0000

I've been asked by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to look into getting their sites added to the NBN.

They have 325 sites, with their boundaries defined in an ESRI shape file, and I would anticipate a similar organisation - site structure for HES as that currently in place for the National Trust for Scotland.

This approach would greatly facilitate their statements of natural significance process, allowing the rapid identification of European Protected Species at their sites, and the construction of general site species lists as an aid to encouraging biodiversity.

Could you please let me know how I should proceed with this?

Best regards
Graham

unique IDs

null@example.com (Brian_Pitkin) — Fri, 13 May 2016 17:48:15 +0000

At one time the URL for a Grid map was based on a unique ID e.g. NHMSYS0000501995 in https://data.nbn.org.uk/Taxa/NHMSYS0000501995/Grid_Map and the Grid Map graphic itself included the same ID e.g NHMSYS0000501995 in https://gis.nbn.org.uk/SingleSpecies/NH … magesize=5 in its root. The same Grid Map unique ID is also used in the Interactive Map's URL

I noticed today that quite a number of the Grid Maps e.g. NBNSYS0100002965 in https://data.nbn.org.uk/Taxa/NBNSYS0100002965/Grid_Map, have a different unique ID e.g NHMSYS0021142180 in https://gis.nbn.org.uk/SingleSpecies/NH … magesize=5 in its root. The latter is also used in the Interactive Map's URL.

It does not appear possible to tell from the graphic's properties which Grid Map or Interactive is represented other than its unique ID and no species names are displayed on the graphics themselves or mentioned in the URL

Have the IDs of the Grid Maps and Interactive Maps been changed deliberately or are the mismatches due to errors?

Installing Watsonian vice-counties on Windows 10

null@example.com (JohnShowers) — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 13:44:12 +0000

I have down loaded the installation tool from the NBN tools website. If I try to run it I get a message along the lines that the program cannot run on my machine. Is this tool supported in Windows 10 and if not does anyone know of a source of the vice-county outline that can be installed? I only require VC32.

Mapping in Europe

null@example.com (Darwyn Sumner) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 06:31:53 +0000

Has anyone given any thought to using Recorder to manage records in Europe?
For mapping in QGIS all one really needs is an output list that has the two lat long columns (doesn't really matter which columns as long as they can find their way into an excel output)
I haven't got very far, just a location "Europe" with a false grid reference somewhere off the south coast.
What fields could be used for lat long outside the UK?