Data

The LifeWatch data explorer provides open data access and facilitates exploratory data analysis of data generated by the local marine-freshwater-terrestrial LifeWatch observatory.

The thematic gateways below give access to the sensor data generated by the local marine-freshwater-terrestrial LifeWatch observatory.

An interactive geoportal provides thematic pan-European remote sensing data made available by LifeWatch Wallonia-Brussels: vegetation cycle, snow probability, solar energy and fire frequency. A prototype geographic object-based integrated ecotope database of the Walloon Region is also available. Furthermore, nitrate, silicate, oxygen, temperature and salinity data is available for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

The themes below give access to the Antarctic observation data of Biodiversity.aq made available through the Belgian LifeWatch infrastructure: (1) Search, find, visualize and download Antarctic biodiversity data through the through the SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Data Portal; (2) Discover the Biogeographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean; (3) Find molecular microbial diversity (meta)data generated by Antarctic researchers (Pola3r); and (4) find various identification keys of antarctic species. These 4 infrastructures are part of the main portal, SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal.

The Barcoding Facility for Organisms and Tissues of Policy Concern (BopCo) provides identifications of policy concern organisms or derived tissues upon request. Alternatively, BopCo connects individuals with taxonomic experts who possess the required know-how and means to identify the sample(s), and who can provide background information on the concerned organisms. Morphological species traits, DNA barcoding and, if needed or relevant, other DNA-based technologies are being used, alone or in combination, to provide reliable taxonomic identifications.

A prerequisite to use DNA barcoding is the availability of comprehensive and reliable reference barcode libraries. Therefore, BopCo also contributes to populating DNA barcode databases with sequences of taxa of policy concern. To this end, BopCo produces new DNA barcodes (broad sense, i.e. not only COI), either at its own initiative or in collaboration with research institutes, governmental organisations, universities and others.

Instead of developing a separate web portal, the barcode sequences produced by BopCo, as well as the associated metadata is made available via the Barcode Of Life Data Systems (BOLD Systems) and GenBank database platforms, from where the sequences can be downloaded for consultation and analysis.

 

The graph on the right shows the number of sequences produced per half year (blue bars) and the cumulative number of sequences produced since the start of BopCo in 2015 (red line).

 

Sequences that have been made publicly available can be found in the respective publications, on BOLD or on GenBank. More information can also be found on the respective project pages through the BopCo website.

The objectives of the Belgian LifeWatch data archeology activities are to fill in the spatial and temporal gaps in the biological data that is currently available to science, to resurface existing biological datasets and to improve the accessibility and visibility of the data for the scientific community.

The gateways below give access to several global data bases and data systems that are maintained or supported as part of the Belgian LifeWatch infrastructure.