Records
What is a record?
A record essentially contains four pecies of information: what, where, when, who. This text is from a blog post we produces as part of the Nature detectives social media campaign:
WHAT you saw
What you saw means we need to know what type of organism you’ve seen. Was it a bird? Was it a fish? Without knowing what you saw a record is completely useless. However, you might not always be able to get to the exact species. We classify species at different levels called taxonomic levels. The most precise taxonomic level is the species level, but maybe you can only get it to the family level (2 levels less precise). It’s still useful! If you provide a photograph or description with your record then someone might be able to help you.
WHERE you were
Where were you? Were you in the centre of a busy city, or out in the middle of nowhere in the peak district? This is very important because we might see different species in different places. It’s good to be as accurate as possible too. The more accurate the record the better we can match up the record with the habitat around it.
WHEN you noticed it
If we look into our database and we see that an exciting species like Hen harrier has been seen on our reserve, but we don’t know when, maybe yesterday, maybe 30 years ago. You can imagine how recent a record is really useful information for us when we’re working out how healthy our nature reserve is. We also expect to see different species at different times of the year, maybe because they’re migratory or hibernate. These records are very useful when we’re assessing how climate change is affecting our plants and animals. We see bees and blossom earlier every year because spring temperatures are warmer than they used to be. We wouldn’t know this if nature detectives didn’t record WHEN they made their record.
And WHO you are
This might not seem as important but it really is, if you found something super rare or exciting then we’d need to be able to contact you to ask some other questions, to make sure that you did see what you said you saw.
What data do we store in Nature Counts?
When you download data you get a large excel sheet (or csv) full of data. Here is what each of the columns means:
ID: A unique identifier this value will inclemently increase as more records are added to the database. Bigger number = later record.
RecordKey: A unique identifier for the Biological Records Centre (BRC)
External Key: This is an ID number that has been set if the data has come from a different source other than nature counts. For example, records from the iRecord app will have an external key
Source: Where has the record come from, which website or app or recording scheme. For example, records from Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust's Nature Counts page have 'Wild Sheffield | General records' n this column and records from the iRecord app have 'iRecord | iRecord App' in this column.
Species: The scientific name for the organism that was recorded
Common name: The common name of the organism that was recorded
Taxon group: The taxonomic group of the organism that was record. There is a standard list of taxonomic group names used by the national species inventory.
Kingdom: The kingdom (taxonomic level) of the organism that was recorded, eg. animalia, Plantae
Order: The order (taxonomic level) of the organism that was recorded
Family: The family (taxonomic level) of the organism that was recorded
TaxonVersionKey: A reference to which version of the taxonomic key that the species name was matched to.
Site name: Some text that the recorder has submitted referring to where the species was found. If it is a sensitive species then this will say: 'Sensitive. Lat long is approximate.'
Original map ref: The grid square that the record is located at. eg, SK282955. Here's a simple guide to what these grid squares mean: https://getoutside.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/guides/beginners-guide-to-grid-references/
Latitude: a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface
Longitude: a geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the Earth's surface
Projection: Projection of the coordinate system, this is relevant if you are doing GIS work with this data.
Precision: How precise the record is in metres, larger values means the record is less precises
Output map ref: If the record was recorded using latitude and longitude, then these values are approximated to a OS grid square. If the record was specified using an OS grid square then this will be the same as 'Original map ref'.
Output map ref projection: the map projection for 'Output map ref'
Biotope: The habitat types asociated with the record
VC number: The number of the vice county that the organism was recorded in. More information about Vice Counties here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice-county
Vice county: A human readable version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice-county
Date interpreted: The mid point between the 'Date from' and 'Date to'.
Date from: Typically, Nature Counts records are associated with a single day therefore the date from, and date to are the , however if there is uncertainty about the date of the record then there might be a different start and end date. For example if an organism is known to be made in January then the 'Date from' might be 01/01/2020 and the 'Date to' might be 31/01/2020.
Date to: See 'Date from'
Date type: Usually the date is recorded as what day it was recorded on (as opposed to what time, or what month) and so the value in this column is 'D'.
Sample method: Not specified in Nature Counts
Recorder: Who recorded the species (not necessarily the same person entered it into Nature Counts). In the format: Last name, First name
Determiner: If anyone helped identify the species they can be noted here in the format: Last name, First name
Recorder certainty: How certain the recorder is about their identification of the organism (choose from: Certain, Likely, Uncertain)
Sex: The sex of the organism (if known)
Stage: The life stage of the organism, the options are: Not recorded, Adult, Pre-adult, Other
Count of sex or state: The quantity of organisms
Zero abundance: This value is T or F related to True or False as to whether this record is an absence record (eg. it was recorded that a species was NOT present)
Comment: If the record was submitted using the 'Enter a list of records' page and an overall comment was provided about
Sample comment: Any comment about each individual record from the recorder.
Images:
Input on date: When was the record input onto Nature Counts
Last edited on date: The latest date that any of the information has been edited in Nature Counts by the recorder or a member of staff.
Verification status 1: The first level of iRecord verification: Unconfirmed, not accepted, accepted. See: https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/records-verified for more information.
Verification status 2: The second level of iRecord verification: Correct, Considered correct, Unable to verify, Incorrect, Plausible, Not reviewed. See: https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/records-verified for more information.
Query: Whether the iRecord verification has been queried.
Verifier: Who verified the species identification.
Verified on: What date the organism's species identification was verified.
Licence: What license was the record submitted under. Depending on the BRC warehouse agreement with your Wildlife Trust this will be CC-BY-NC (in short: you can use it if you attribute the original recorder and not for commercial purposes) or CC-BY (In short: you can use it if you attribute the original recorder and but can be used for commercial purposes) . Data from other sources might
Automated checks: When a record is uploaded to Nature Counts the BRC will do some automated checks. The data in this column informs you whether it has passed these checks.