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Environment Bay of Plenty's Freshwater Wetland Database holds data relating to freshwater wetlands, collected at different times for purposes including from SNA and PNA reports and field visits. The database, which is implemented in Dot.Net, provides for site, ecological, management, species, threats, pest and consents data (510kb).

EBoP's Freshwater Wetland Database is described in the 2005 "Survey of Regional Council Biodatabases", accessible from the Dataversity Bibliography.

Contact

For more information contact Nancy Willems.

Environment Waikato (EW) has been investigating options for biodiversity prioritisation since the early 2000s but the project has been slow to get off the ground. During 2008, however, the project is starting to come to fruition and EW aims to map, inventory, score and prioritise where possible all 'Ecologically Valuable Areas' (EVAs) for most of the ecosystem types within its region over the next few years.

The task is massive, especially for indigenous terrestrial ecosystems and also because the scale of data capture means EVAs, or 'Sites' as they are commonly called, may be as small as around 0.5ha. EW approaches the task one district at a time (there are 12 in total in the Waikato Region) and given the SNA work already being undertaken by some districts, EW makes sure to work with these councils where possible to avoid duplicating work.

The system being used has no name but is commonly referred to as the Biodiversity Prioritisation project. It begins as a desktop GIS excercise where qualified ecologists spatially inventory any indigeneous terrestrial vegetation, sand dunes or palustrine wetlands that may potentially be locally, regionally, nationally or internationally significant using 11 criteria as defined in appendix 3 of EW's regional policy statement. All sites that are at least regionally significant are then to be further evaluated by the ecologists and scored and ranked using criteria still under development here at EW. Again it is a hugely time consuming task given the level of detail and therefore the work is being done one district at a time. The data is documented in metadata and reports and ultimately will be stored in Oracle Spatial.

EW is also aware of DoC's Biodiversity Information Management System and NHMS databases and intends to work more closely with relevant conservancies to reduce the overlap here where possible. There are still some issues to address, but it is expected that data comprising proposed sites for a couple of districts will be complete within a few months and subsequent data to become available as resourcing allows.

Contact

For more information contact Derek Phyn or Yanbin Deng.

Environment Bay of Plenty is about 50% of the way through a project to build an integrated biodiversity suite. Jim Fretwell says the project aims to build a consistent set of systems that have a single spatial web interface. Where this is achieved, administrators can work on their own systems, but the users of the data, both within and outside the organisation, can access it via a single web interface.

One of the problems that the project addresses is the storage and use of different qualities of information. EBoP wants to store all the information that it has, even if it originates from informal observations, without compromising the integrity of high quality data. It has therefore developed a data quality rating and depreciation system. Data that is collected using highly controlled methodologies is given a high initial rating, and a relative depreciation rate (e.g. GPS data doesn't deteriorate, but the accuracy of data such as wetland extents data will deteriorate over time).

The data ratings and depreciation system provides a framework that allows the comparison of information and the ability to present the most accurate/important information to the public or internal staff, while giving them the ability to drill into all information if they need to. It also facilitates the evaluation of information when data-sharing with other organisations.

Brett Stansfield of Hawkes Bay Regional Council stores all the region's freshwater fish data in the New Zealand Freshwater Fish database.

The system now contains Hawkes Bay data dating back to the 1960s. The fact that NIWA take care of the design and maintenance of the system, provide huge advantages over using an in-house system. NZFFD has useful a useful Web-based spatial interface, that makes it easy to find data by area and species.

Auckland Regional Council has commissioned the development of EcoBase is a powerful tool that provides quality ecological data management functionality.

This application favours a wide range of public and private organisations, especially those who have large taxonomic and ecological datasets in various formats, with limited consistency. Developed by iQuest of Hamilton, this SQL database is a secure repository for our marine and freshwater ecological data, designed with ISO accreditation in mind.

EcoBase improves workflow, and the quality, accessibility, interpretation and manipulation of data with a range of fantastic features. Its ongoing development is assured, sculpted by the users.

Key Features of EcoBase

Taxonomic data

• displayed on a taxonomic tree, species are laid out as if by Linnaeus himself
• storage and querying of taxonomic data for organisms identified to different classification levels

Flexibility

• hold and edit data in a ‘workfile’ until auditing is complete, then send to the archive (home of quality data)
• customise your parameter (variable and sub-variable) lists and your import templates
• group sites by program, habitat type, etc
• store data from a range of different sampling regimes
• control access privileges to various areas, or tasks

Querying and reporting

• elegant querying of data in workfiles or the archive
• query sites, groups of sites, taxa, specific size ranges, date ranges, quality codes, etc
• export your queries, export your charts
• reports to the web, with interactive user querying

Reference info is all inclusive

• store your spatial info, sample methodology, raw data, media, contact info, and more
• log your data editing and track your users

Possibilities

• applicable to a wide range of taxonomic and ecological data, eg aquatic, terrestrial, community monitoring, Biosecurity, Biodiversity etc
• a national 'hub': centralised taxa and variables lists, enabling expedient comparison of inter-organisational data

Contact

Mike McMurtry, Marcus Cameron or Phil White (Manager), Environmental Services, Auckland Regional Council.

When Environment Canterbury has begun monitoring forest restoration projects in association with Christchurch City Council staff on CCC reserves in the Port Hills, and at a number of private conservation covenant areas on Banks Peninsula. Formak (Forest Monitoring and Assessment Kit), was chosen as the repository and framework for collecting, storing and reporting on the forests.

FORMAK offers a standardised data collection and recording system that also has quick, simple reporting and analysis capacity. Using Formak has the additional benefit that data can be shared nationally, eg for state of environment monitoring and reporting purposes.

Marlborough District Council stores all its fresh water fish data in FBIS.

Environmental Scientist Pete Hamill says that "the big advantage is that all the metadata decisions have been made. The forms give you the details that you need to fill in."