India Biodiversity Portal is an initiative to establish a community owned, open, collaborative biodiversity information system. It believes in providing open and free access to biodiversity data. It seeks participation and contributions from a wide community of researchers, amateur naturalists, citizens and institutions. All contributions are on creative commons licenses with attribution to the contributor. The portal is managed by an inclusive consortium of partners with interests in biodiversity conservation of the mega-diverse region of India. The portal currently has a species module, an observation module, a map module and a document module.
Image credits:
India Biodiversity Portal. Lizard observation by Ashutosh Shinde
Free and open access to India's biodiversity information
Year of Initiation:
2008
Project Coordinator:
Prabhakar Rajagopal
E-mail Address:
Role in the project:
Project Manager
Institutional Affiliation:
Strand Life Sciences
Taxa:
All taxa
Status:
Active
No. of participants:
Above 1000
Geographical spread of project:
ALL INDIA
Further information:
Our project covers entire India.
Purpose of the project:
This portal aims to provide information on biodiversity in India. It is designed to harness collective knowledge, seek voluntary participation of users and establish a participatory platform for content generation, verification and usage. The Portal aims to facilitate and enable widespread participation by all citizens in contributing and accessing information on Indian biodiversity.
Coordinating institution/organisation:
Strand Life Sciences
Location of the coordinating institution/organisation(s):
Bengaluru
Data availability:
Immediately available to anyone
Participation in language other than English:
Yes
Other languages allowed for participation:
Translation of the portal is available in multiple Indian languages.
Appropriate age groups of participants:
All age groups
Citizen participation through:
Website, Mobile application
Why should people participate:
India Biodiversity portal aims to crowd sourse participation form a wide community of researchers, amateur naturalists, citizens and institutions, with the objective of aggregating data and information on the biodiversity of India. As a citizen you can contribute observations and identify them to help build distribution, seasonality and trait based information on the species. As an expert you can help curate data , validate records and contribute species descriptions.
Prior knowledge or expertise required:
No prior expertise is required, other than basic knowledge of the internet and websites and taking photographs of species around you.