Conservation Atlas Surveys

In the first few decades of European settlement, records of Australian vegetation ranged from descriptions by explorers and new settlers, artists? drawings, through to specimens sent to international herbaria and museums. In the late 19th century more systematic observations were published and form the basis of today?s quantitative approaches. In the 1980s a project was conducted in which data across the continent of Australia from 711 terrestrial and littoral vegetation surveys were collected and digitised to enable an objective assessment of the conservation status of Australian plant communities, the ?Conservation Atlas? project (Specht et al. 1995, Specht and Specht, 2013). The source files (reprints and reports) were retained as completely as possible, while the extracted data were retained as print outs and/or stored digitally using the technology current at the time. The data delivered through the Atlas of Living Australia (and as a full data package through the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity: http://doi.org/10.5063/F1QC01QK ; Specht et al., 2018a) is the result of an effort to retrieve the data from the Conservation Atlas project. Accessible paper and digital sources were obtained and re-entered where required, georeferences and sources were updated. This work resulted in a collection of sites x species observation records mapped to Darwin Core format. The data from 1390 communities incorporating records of 9450 taxa were retrieved from a total of 705 sources between 1879 to 1989. This was a considerable loss from the initial project, but substantial nevertheless. The project aimed to provide a sustainable open-access resource to the research community and others to enable better long-term comprehension of vegetation change, and to provide insight into the long-term challenges of effective data curation. The details of the retrieval project can be obtained in Specht et al. (2018). References Specht A. and Specht R.L. (2013) Australia: Biodiversity of Ecosystems. In, The Encyclopedia of Biodiversity Vol. 1 (ed. B. Levin, et al.) pp 291-306. Waltham, MA: Academic Press. Specht, R.L., Specht, A. Whelan, M.B. and Hegarty, E.E. (1995) Conservation Atlas of Plant Communities in Australia. Centre for Coastal Management in association with Southern Cross University Press. Specht A., Bolton M.P., Kingsford B., Specht R.L., Belbin L. (2018a) Data from the Conservation Atlas of Australian Plant communities 1879-1989 (1995). Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. doi:10.5063/F1QC01QK. Specht A., Bolton M.P., Kingsford B., Specht R.L., Belbin L. (2018b) A story of data won, data lost and data re-found: the realities of ecological data preservation. Biodiversity Data Journal 6:e28073. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.6.e28073欧洲殖民初期的数十年间，澳大利亚植被的记录形式多样，涵盖探险家与早期定居者的记述、艺术家的绘图，乃至送往国际标本馆与博物馆的植物标本。19世纪晚期，更具系统性的观测记录得以发表，成为当代定量研究方法的基础。20世纪80年代，一项旨在对澳大利亚植物群落保护现状开展客观评估的项目正式启动，该项目从澳大利亚大陆范围内的711项陆地与滨海植被调查中收集数据并进行数字化处理，此即《保护图集》（Conservation Atlas）项目（Specht等，1995；Specht与Specht，2013）。项目尽可能完整地保留了源文件（重印本与研究报告），提取出的数据则以纸质打印件形式留存，或采用当时的主流技术手段进行数字化存储。 通过澳大利亚生物多样性图谱（Atlas of Living Australia）发布（亦可通过生物复杂性知识网络获取完整数据包，链接：http://doi.org/10.5063/F1QC01QK；Specht等，2018a）的数据集，正是从《保护图集》项目中复原数据的工作成果。研究团队获取了可访问的纸质与数字资源，并在必要时重新录入数据，同时更新了地理配准信息与数据源。此项工作最终生成了一套按达尔文核心格式（Darwin Core）映射的样地-物种观测记录集合。研究人员从1879年至1989年间的705个数据源中，复原了涵盖9450个分类单元的1390个植物群落的相关数据。相较于初始项目的规模，此次复原的数据量有所缩减，但仍具备重要的科学价值。本项目旨在为科研界及其他群体提供可持续的开放获取资源，以助力学界更深入地理解植被长期变化，并为应对有效数据管理的长期挑战提供实践参考。 本复原项目的详细信息可参考Specht等（2018）的相关文献。 参考文献 Specht A.与Specht R.L.（2013）澳大利亚：生态系统生物多样性。载于《生物多样性百科全书》第1卷（B. Levin等编），第291-306页。马萨诸塞州沃尔瑟姆：学术出版社（Academic Press）。 Specht R.L.、Specht A.、Whelan M.B.与Hegarty E.E.（1995）《澳大利亚植物群落保护图集》。海岸管理中心与南十字星大学出版社联合出版。 Specht A.、Bolton M.P.、Kingsford B.、Specht R.L.、Belbin L.（2018a）1879-1989年澳大利亚植物群落保护图集数据集（1995）。生物复杂性知识网络。DOI:10.5063/F1QC01QK。 Specht A.、Bolton M.P.、Kingsford B.、Specht R.L.、Belbin L.（2018b）一场数据获取、遗失与重获的历程：生态数据保存的现实困境。《生物多样性数据期刊》6:e28073。DOI:10.3897/BDJ.6.e28073