IMIS

The Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre (ACCDC) collects data on rare species and natural communities in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and Labrador and in adjacent marine waters. To determine which species are rare, the ACCDC develops sub-national (i.e. provincial) rarity ranks, or S-ranks, for each jurisdiction. These ranks are established with provincial and regional scientists, using available data and expert knowledge. This dataset represents occurrence records for rare species of: a) marine birds b) anadromous fish c) rare marine mammals for coasts and rivers in these five terrestrial jurisdictions plus the Bay of Fundy. ACCDC gathered rare marine species occurrence information from a wide variety of sources, including the Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the University of New Brunswick and the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, georeferenced the data and compiled it into ACCDC database format.To assemble and provide information and expertise on species at risk and natural communities, and to undertake field biological inventories, in support of decision-making, research and education in Atlantic Canada. These data are for display on the OBIS portal and associated mapping programs and for download to personal computers for ad-hoc end-user analysis. OBIS schema concepts present in the data set include: DateLastModified, InstitutionCode, CollectionCode, CatalogNumber, ScientificName, BasisOfRecord, Citation, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, ScientificNameAuthor, Collector, YearCollected, Country, State, County, Locality, Longitude, StartLongitude, EndLongitude, Latitude, EndLatitude, CoordinatePrecision. Quality: Species identification accurate, assessment of species rarity is done with local species experts and is as accurate as possible given the current state of species information. Occurrence location data for populations of rare species of anadromous fish and marine birds are included for a jurisdiction (an Atlantic province plus Labrador) only if the species is determined to be rare in that jurisdiction. Data for occurrences of rare species of marine mammals is included for the Bay of Fundy only. Data are usually requested by species or by location (e.g., at a given locale or within a specified area, the identification of all rare species present). The original dataset, provided by OBIS Canada, contains all distribution records. The dataset in OBIS Seamap is a subset of the original dataset, only containing marine mammal, seabird and/or sea turtle records.