Developers

Access to taxonomic data, allowing you to look up scientific and Norwegian names of species, as well as their place in the tree of life, the status of the name (is it valid, or a synonym for something else), the status of the species on the red or black list, and references to more information.

Georeferenced observations of species in Norway: what was observed where and when, and by whom? Filter on species or species groups, areas (administrative, conservational or your own polygons), dates, precision, red-/or black list status, observed behavior and get aggregated statistics and/or detailed data.

We have made available the API of our citizen science project Species Observations System, so that developers can post observational data (meeting certain requirements) directly into the system, thus contributing with more open data and knowledge! All observations are shared with GBIF, from which we in turn also harvest all occurrence data for Norway. Another option, if you have large amounts of data, is to host your own GBIF Intergrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), mapping your local data to the appropriate standard and sharing it directly.

Our Species Online project serves to collect and distribute expert written text and multimedia on (ultimately) all species and species groups available for all, under open licenses. This data can be accessed through an API, or fetched directly as pre-styled, responsive HTML widgets.

In addition to a text search to access such content, we are now also offering digital identification keys. These csv-based datasets contain the required expert knowledge to separate between the species, with links to the necessary resources such as images and further explanations. These data are read and presented to the user in an open JavaScript module that can be embedded or viewed stand alone. Have a look at the key for dragonflies and damselflies for example, embedded, stand-alone or the underlying data.

An exciting new type of data that we will start collecting and sharing in the future are so-called traits. Properties of species and individuals, as well as their interactions with one another and with the nature types in which they live, will provide new and existing data with a useful ecological context. The Encyclopedia of Life (with whom we cooperate) has already made quite some trait data available through the Global Biotic Interactions API.

No matter how many observations you have, they are always the result of occurrences and an observer: where has the species been seen, in contrast to an accurate distribution map (where does the species occur). The latter can ultimately only be provided by species experts, although they can be helped by better and better modeling. Initiatives such as the Map of Life display data  from several API's on a single CartoDB map, giving a good overview of available knowledge (both expert opinions and occurrence data).