Want Ads

Environment Canterbury ecologist Philip Grove carries out wetland survey, condition assessment and monitoring using guidelines developed by the MFE. These assist data collection and description to national standards. However, data for each site currently resides in electronic or paper spreadsheets, which do not facilitate analysis, reporting and sharing.

Philip Grove is looking for a system which will make it easy to input, analyse and report on the data, as well as making it widely accessible. Ideally the system would link data on wetland type and condition to a spatial database depicting wetland extent.

Environment Canterbury has a substantial amount of freshwater ecology and habitat monitoring data stored in an Access database that is simplistic, its user interface is limited, and analysis and reporting require expert knowledge of its structure. Water Quality Scientist Adrian Meredith has identified that any further investment in the database should be weighed up against migrating the data to any existing systems that are more robust and highly developed for similar purposes. Aligning with any other existing systems would also facilitate easier transfer of data nationally.

ECan is interested in looking at any other systems in operation in other councils that work well.

Contact

Nelson City Council manages terrestrial biodiversity data for around 200 sites in its region. The data dates back to surveys that were conducted in the 1990s, and is mainly vegetation-related, with some birds and invertebrates data. The data is currently in Word documents, and is mainly descriptive, with some species lists and classifications. Much of the data relates to privately owned land, and some was collected on the basis that it remain private.

Nelson City Council is a relatively small organisation, and being a unitary authority, biodiversity is a relatively small part of its activity. The system required, therefore, may only facilitate basic management and reporting, but it must be robust enough to ensure the future of the data.

The system must use a portable data structure, based on a good metadata dictionary and thesaurus so that the terminology and categorisation that are used are both locally and nationally consistent. It will ideally provide analysis tools. The requirements for the system include adequate documentation and access to guidance and support for implementation and operation.

Contact

Tasman District Council has recently commenced monitoring Significant Natural Areas in its region. No systems for recording and reporting on the data collected are yet in place. TDC Biosecurity Coordinator/Policy Planner, Lindsay Vaughan, who is responsible for Biodiversity at TDC, is seeking information about systems that are already being used successfully to manage SNA assessment data in other areas.

Contact