New Zealand NIWA Biological Obervations

Overview: 

New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) Marine Biodata is available at OBIS; includes occurrence details of New Zealand marine fauna and flora from around the coastline and offshore. Information is assimilated from a variety of sources including unpublished data sets and data digitised from journal articles. Where the source is from a published paper the source paper citation is listed at the record level in the original data. The OBIS compiled data excludes source location and includes species name, individual count, lat/lon, and some environmental correlates like depth and salinity.

 

Dataset Location: OBIS NIWA Marine Biodata ('Marine biological observation data from coastal and offshore surveys around New Zealand')

Direct Download: OBIS NIWA Marine Biodata

Site Location: New Zealand coast, covering some Australian and Antartic waters

Site(s) Georeferenced: Yes

Timespan: 1873 - 2008, most since 1970

Sampling Frequency: Irregularly

Data Collection Summary / Methods: Data is compiled from primary research, unpublished data sets, and digested journal articles. Methods vary widely among NIWA Marine Biological Information System (MBIS) research vessels.  MBIS currently contains data that are primarily the results of a series of research trawl surveys carried out as part of New Zealand's Ministry of Fisheries data collection to support fisheries management and several decades of marine invertebrate research sampling in the NZ Exclusive Economic Zone. MBIS also contains presence data for coralline algae around the New Zealand coast. Details of some of these methods are described by the NIWA Chatham / Challenger Project and the Census of Antarctic Marine Life Project.

Data collected: species name, individual count, date, location, temperature, depth, salinity, nitrogen, oxygen, silicate

Known Issues: To obtain this dataset you must use the interactive data mapper and make multiple clicks to orient and dowload data. May be difficult to locate quickly or with an automated program.

Best Practices: Can be used with Marine Environment Classification or the Invertebrate Collection (Data Request Required).
 
Conditions for use: 'freely available' and 'open-access' as per OBIS: http://iobis.org/about/vision

NIWA opperates under the Open Geospational Consortium and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

Citation/ Distributing Author: SWPRON (2014). Marine biological observation data from coastal and offshore surveys around New Zealand. Southwestern Pacific OBIS, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Wellington, New Zealand, 2255 records, Online http://nzobisipt.elasticbeanstalk.com/resource.do?r=mbis_nz released on June 20, 2014.
 
Supplemental resources: NIWA Aquatic Biodiversity and Biosecurity Update
 
Available via the EcoData Retriever: No

Last modified: 
2015
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