GBIF: The Cartography of Species Distribution
Global Biodiversity Information Facility GBIF integrates cartographic information with biodiversity data worldwide. Currently, 53 countries are integrated throughout the world as well as 43 international organizations with the objective of providing free access to information related to biodiversity.
In other words, GBIF API, allows us to consult observation records of Species available in the main natural collections of the countries. Latin America has a great wealth of biodiversity, which is why the opportunity to carry out a practical exercise to tell a story is timely; in this case of the species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora CITES using as reference the list of Species associated with Venezuela, which can be consulted using the SPECIES + / CITES CHECKLIST API.
Venezuela occupies the seventh place in the countries with the greatest biodiversity in the world, so analyzing the distribution of its protected species can give us a more defined look at the magnitude of Venezuelan biodiversity in addition to its spatial distribution using these two valuable sources of data, based on the Python query script developed by Marie Grosjean.
Data Source
The following data sources will be needed to extract and generate the required information:
- List of protected species under the CITES Convention for Venezuela to identify CITES species in Venezuela.
- Consult the GBIF API using our credentials to discover the spatial distribution and observation data of the species.
3.- Functions script for the query of the GBIF Python query API to create query queries.
Jupyter Notebook
Data Visualization
Using kepler.gl to visualize this data, a more complete visualization is also available on my website. www.roqueleal.me
It’s great all the available biodiversity information available at GIBF, which is all of the information available in Venezuela about research into biodiversity, the different ecosystems and the knowledge that has become available in different types of publications, biological collections.
The data viz shows the most representative ecosystems of Venezuela a country rich in biodiversity but currently lacking sufficient human and financial resources to effectively conserve and sustainably benefit from its species and habitats.
