From cameratrap to GBIF

Camera traps have become a standard method of surveying land mammals weighing over 200 grams. The images are a source of data on mammals at the species and community level, allowing us to learn more about the distribution, interactions and activity patterns of particular mammals. Unfortunately, collected images and associated observations are currently being lost on a massive scale.

Agouti (http://www.agouti.eu) offers a solution. It is a platform for processing and archiving image material from camera traps, and was developed by the Dutch Wageningen University & Research and INBO. Agouti offers researchers the possibility to manage, classify and archive visual material within collaborative projects. Agouti helps to standardise and facilitate camera trap research, and secures images and data for scientific research.

In this project we will develop a standard export format for Agouti, so that users can share and archive their camera trap observations and associated images on e.g. Zenodo. This Camera Trap Data Package format allows to combine camera trap data across projects and systems. It can also be translated to Darwin Core, so that the observations can be discovered via the general biodiversity information system GBIF.

NLBIF is supporting this project: by supporting the publication of data directly from Agouti, we can unlock a large number of projects for nature conservation and scientific research. By actively engaging Agouti users to publish data and making the technical threshold for this as low as possible, more data will be made available to GBIF faster.