General

How can I add a question to this FAQ?
Please feel free to add questions to this page--we'll try to answer them for you.

How do I find more information?
Look at the documentation available on this site from the help link. As in any project, documentation is essential and needs to be enhanced. We will do this by participation and contribution from all of you.

What is the intent of the portal?
The portal is intended as a public participatory effort. The Project has been endorsed by the National Knowledge Commission, the Government of India, to promote decentralization, transparency, the right to information and participatory action with respect to biodiversity conservation and utilization. It has been conceived in the public domain and will solicit broad-based participation from civil society, government, research institutions and conservation NGOs to consolidate and augment existing biodiversity information and make it readily accessible to all stakeholders.

Who are the people and organizations behind this effort?
The India Biodiversity Portal initiative was proposed as a collaborative effort between five partner institutions, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune; Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore; Foundation for the Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions, Bangalore; National Chemicals Laboratory, Pune; University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. During the development of the portal, there has been an appreciation in the idea of such a portal that will provide a platform for sharing and open access to biodiversity information. Other institutions have come together as partners on the portal by committing resources, sharing data, and providing intellectual leadership for the evolution of an open and participatory portal. Currently these are Foundation for Ecological Security, Anand and Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore.

How can I participate in this effort?
This is a public participatory portal and its strength and growth depends upon the extent of participation and public ownership.

• You can contribute with data;
• You can contribute with platform develpment and technology;
• You can contribute with helping in the governance; and
• You can contribute with resources.

What are the upcoming functionalities?
Oh, a lot. This is just the first cut of the portal. As is the nature of development of webapps, we will be in perpetual beta and will be adding features regularly. We would like the users to participate and set priorities. We have a page allocated to this. Please feel free to engage with priorities for future versions of the portal.

Definitions

What is the meaning of Abiotic and biogeography?
Abiotic refers to soil, water and climate, the non-living factors that determine the ecology and biodiversity of a location. Biogeography refers to the division of the landmass into natural units, depending on the ensemble of living systems. These are in turn influenced by the abiotic factors

What is Attribution?
Attribution is the original citation of the source who own the intellectual property rights for the data. They need to be acknowledged if the data is used anywhere.

What is the difference between created by and attribution?
While attribution is the citation of original source, created by refers to the person who converted the data into a GIS format for the portal.

What are layer attributes?
Layer attributes are the data associated with each feature in the map.

What is linked data?
Linked data is data associated with each feature of the map. For example, if a map has vegetation samples plot locations and in each vegetation sample plot there were many species that were enumerated, the species enumerated will be represented as linked data.

What are resource tables?
For any column in the data, there could be some general information available. For example, if there is a species associated with the data, the species could have additional taxonomic, habitat, photo essay or any other information. This data does not concern the particular location, but is like a library resource on an item in the data. These are designated as resource tables. Click on the + to see the details available on the resource associated with the map.

Function

How do I open and and display a map?
Expand the layer tree and click on the check-box corresponding to a map. This map will be displayed in the map frame and will be the active layer.

Can I see multiple maps at a time?
Yes, you can. Click on multiple maps and these will be displayed in the map frame. However, only the top-most layer is the active layer and is clickable. The top-layer will be bright and the rest of the layers are faded.

How do I find details about a map?
Click on the name of the map on the link, or click on the title of the active map on top of the map tool bar to display information on the map. The pop-up shows a summary of the map, the layer attributes, the link tables and the resource tables associated with the map. The details tab provides a description of the map, along with links and associated references.

How do I see the legend of a map?
Click on the legend tab on the top left panel of the map to see the legend. The legend corresponds to the top-most map displayed. Currently, the legend is available only for polygon layers.

Why is the map legend empty?
If no map is displayed, or the top-most map is a point layer, the legend tab will be empty.

How do I see details of a map?
You can see the details of a map and the list of associated data by looking at the layer information pages. These can be assessed by clicking on the name of the map on the layer tree, by clicking on the map name on top of the map panel, or from the layer named, by clicking on the information icon. This will launch a pop-up with information on the layer.

How can I enter data?
You need to be logged in to enter data into the portal. Only certain layers are participatory and editable. These layers will be shown with a participatory icon in the layer manager. If you have permissions in the layer, the map tool bar will have an add feature icons. You can pick the tool and add feature and attach annotations with it.

What are the red points I see on the map?
The points are virtual points which show that there are too many points in a small area and it is not possible to show all the points on the map frame at the current zoom level. You will have to zoom in to see the actual points and look at the data in the map. Clicking on a red point will show a pop-up telling you the number of points at this location and asking you to zoom in to see the points. Note that the details of virtual points will not be shown in the Data on Demand.

What are Theme and Geography tabs?
Theme and Geography are two ways in which all the maps have categorised. Under themes, maps are grouped into the topics that they represent and under geography, all maps that pertain to an areas are grouped together.

What is the Layer manager?
Click on the icon on the layer tree tool bar to bring up the layer manager. The layer manager shows the maps currently on display. You can change the order of the layers in the layer manager, look at the information on a layer, identify participatory layers, and remove layers from view.

Clicking on a point in the map does not show me details on the feature?
Only the features of the active layer are clickable. You may be clicking on one of the inactive layers. The active layer is brighter in the map frame. To make a layer active, open the layer manager and move the layer to the top.

Only certain points seem clickable, why?
Only the features of the active layer are clickable. You may be clicking on one of the inactive layers. The active layer is brighter in the map frame. To make a layer active, open the layer manager and move the layer to the top.

What is an active map?
An active map is the top-most among various maps displayed on the screen. Most functionalities are applicable only to the active map.

How do I know which map is active?
All the displayed maps are listed in the layer manager. Layer manager can be opened by clicking on the icon on the layer tree. The top-most among the list is the active map.

How do I make a map active?
In the layer manager, drag any map to top of the list to make it active.

Data

How are the maps organized on the site?
Maps are organized on the site by themes and by geographical locations, or geography. Use the tab to look at the maps by theme or by geography and select the maps that you would like displayed.

Can I see a list of all maps on this site?
All the maps available on the site are shown in the layer tree. Expand the tree to see all the maps available.

Why are there maps on rainfall and well levels on a biodiversity portal?
We believe that rainfall and sub-soil water levels are important for biodiversity conservation. The biodiversity of an area is dependent on rainfall and water levels and recharge in wells are dependent on the surrounding vegetation. In fact, one of the restoration programs of FES has been monitoring wells to find the effect of afforestation and restoration on ground water recharge.

How do I find the source of a map?
If you want to know what is the source of the map, how the map was created, what is the attribution of a map, click on the map name in the tree. This will launch a pop-up giving details on the map and the data associated with the map.

How do I see data associated with a feature on a map?
Click on any feature of the active map. This will launch a pop-up showing the summary data associated with the feature. To see all the details associated with the layer, click on the details link on the pop-up. If there are linked tables associated with the map, these will be shown in a tab in the details pop-up.

How do I see data associated with a set of features?
Click on the Data on Demand tab at the bottom of the map panel. This will bring up a table with the data associated with a set of features displayed on a map. To locate a site on the map, click on any row of the table. This will show a pop-up on the map with the data associated with it.

How do I see details on a species?
Currently we have resource tables for plants and birds collected from various public sources. In maps that refer to plant or bird species, a details column will link to the resource table. The resource table will further have links to information on the web pertaining to a species. We intend expanding this web of relationships, linking to other sites and enriching the information available, in the spirit of semantic Web 2.0

Is there a link to other global data sets?
Few species data sets have links to species information pages in other global data bases such as IUCN redlist, fishbase etc. These links can be found from the data tables linked to the features.

Where did these maps come from?
These maps are generated and compiled from various sources and are provided for academic, review and information purposes only. The sources are specified in the attribution of every map.

How do I use these maps?
You can use these maps under the terms and conditions specified in the site and give proper attribution for the map.