Eco Insight: Priority species
Records for priority species are extracted from the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Atlas which is the UK’s largest collection of biodiversity information, using their API to get the very latest view of the records.
Response from the API are filtered to only present records that:
- Have been submitted in the last 10 years
- Have an identificationVerificationStatus of
- Accepted
- Accepted - considered correct
- Accepted - correct
- AND have a licence type of
- Open Government Licence – OGL
- Creative Commons No Rights Reserved Licence – CC0
- Creative Commons With Attribution Licence – CC-BY
The following further filters are applied to extract the Key species
Bats - order: Chiroptera
Great Crested Newts - species:"Triturus cristatus"
The following classes from the API response have been grouped together to form the following categories within the Other species part of the priority species
Mammals
- Mammalia
- Aves
- Amphibia
- Reptilia
- Actinopterygii
- Elasmobranchii
- Cephalaspidomorphi
- Insecta
- Arachnida
- Diplopoda
- Chilopoda
- Malacostraca
- Branchiopoda
- Maxillopoda
- Polychaeta
- Enopla
- Magnoliopsida
- Bryopsida
- Jungermanniopsida
- Marchantiopsida
- Polytrichopsida
- Lycopodiopsida
- Pinopsida
- Agaricomycetes
- Arthoniomycetes
- Lecanoromycetes
- Leotiomycetes
- Pucciniomycetes
- Eurotiomycetes
- Sordariomycetes
- Ustilaginomycetes
- Dothideomycetes
- Coniocybomycetes
- Pezizomycetes
- Exobasidiomycetes
- Tremellomycetes
- Lichinomycetes
- Charophyceae
- Florideophyceae
- Phaeophyceae
Data source: National Biodiversity Network Atlas
Data update schedule: Half Annually
Mapping of the grids and calculating location grid size
Records submitted to the NBN Atlas have a location defined in one of two ways, and then a measure of the uncertainty of that location. The location is either described by latitude/longitude coordinates with a coordinate uncertainty, or a National Grid Reference (NGR).
For coordinate records the coordinates themselves show an occurrence location and the uncertainty measure is treated as a radius, in metres, creating a circle around that point. So the actual location of the siting will have been at some location within that circular buffer.
For NGR records, instead of coordinates, the surveyor will have submitted the record based on a square grid cell within the British National Grid. The uncertainty is represented by the number of figures that make up the NGR. For example the grid cell ST is a 100x100km grid square, whereas ST4544 (a four figure NGR) is a 1km grid square. Typically the records from NBN Atlas that we include in reports will range from a six figure NGR (100x100m) down to 10 figure (1x1m). Again the siting will have been at some location within that grid square.
NBN translate coordinates with uncertainty values into the appropriate NGR and vice versa. In our reports we use the NGR grid squares for reporting for consistency and clarity in mapping. However it is important to note that there is not always a perfect relationship between a coordinate with uncertainty and the corresponding grid square. For example, NGR sizes are restricted to a small number of values (1, 10, 100) whereas the uncertainty values accompanying coordinates can be more or less any number. As such, when an uncertainty value exceeds a number that can be easily translated to an equivalent NGR size, we have to take the next size up. This may increase the likelihood of those records being reported.
Some NGR records are submitted as tetrads. These are 2km grid squares that are denoted by a 10km grid reference followed by a letter that is associated with one of the 25 2km grid squares that sits within it e.g. SZ39I. As these records exceed the 1km limit we use for grid square size, these records are not displayed in our reports.