Curated Plant and Invertebrate Data for Bushfire Modelling

This data asset contains observations of individual plants and animals (“occurrences”) sourced from the Atlas of Living Australia. Data on vascular plants are based on the following paper:

Godfree et al. (2021) Implications of the 2019-2020 Megafires for the Biogeography and Conservation of Australian Vegetation. Nature Communications 12: 1023 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21266-5

Data on invertebrates are from the following report:

Marsh et al. (2021) Threatened species hub report: Assessment of the impacts of the 2019-20 wildfires on southern and eastern Australia on invertebrate species. NESP Threatened Species Recovery Hub Project 8.3.1 Final report, Brisbane.

Both studies were performed to understand the impacts of the Australian “Black Summer” (2019-20) fires on the taxonomic group in question. Consequently, this aggregated dataset is designed to support off-the-shelf bushfire impact modelling, and to provide useful context for associated biodiversity conservation work. A total of 896 species of vascular plants and 44,146 invertebrate species.

The combined data asset was produced by the Science & Decision Support Team at the Atlas of living Australia (ALA) in collaboration with the authors of the original data sets. This was done as part of an Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) bushfire data challenges project. The data contained in this deposition has been cleaned by researchers and taxonomists to ensure it is of high quality. Therefore, compared to data returned by the ALA, the unique record ID’s may return a different species or location than is denoted in this data set: these records have potentially been changed by the authors of the data to reflect what they believe is correct.