Distributions of biological species in the British Isles

The data incorporate the taxonomic code of the organism, together with geographical coordinates of its location, date of observation, information on habitat and conservation status. Over 6 million records covering 15,000 species are held in digital form as Oracle tables.

The majority of the data are donated by volunteer recorders and are received by national recording schemes. The Biological Records Centre (BRC) is also assisted in its core activities and database functions by the statutory Conservation Agencies through a support contract administered by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). The database is used to publish distribution atlases (at 10 km square resolution) and to provide computerised retrieval and mapping services to a wide user community.