EDIT MapViewer and Map REST services Mergen, P.¹; Davy, J.²; Theeten, F. ¹ & Roca-Ristol, P.³
¹Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), Leuvensesteenweg 13, 3080 Tervuren, Belgium Patricia.Mergen@africamuseum.be
²National Botanic Garden of Belgium, Bouchout Domain, Nieuwelaan 38, 1860 Meise, Belgium
³Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2 28006 Madrid, Spain

During the two hour session titled Biodiversity Informatics for Biosystematics we plan to include a 15 minutes + 5 minutes questions feature with a power point presentation highlighting the EU Network of Excellence EDIT for European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy, MapViewer and the EDIT Map REST Services.

The MapViewer is an online GIS tool for taxonomists to plot and query distribution data of species to be used in publications. It has many valuable features that operate entirely online with no need to download any client software. The platform links to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) allowing the users species data to be compared to the data contained within GBIF. There are also spatial analysis tools included in the MapViewer to perform more complex studies. The ability to highlight and label regions interactively on the map for reference after printing is also possible. It is also open source and free to use, which is becoming very desirable in the taxonomic world.

The Map REST Services are tools used by institutions to allow for the dynamic mapping of species data allowing points or areas to be highlighted. Queries can be preformed on species datasets that result in the displaying of a map that shows the species occurrence locations based on the query preformed. There is also the possibility of viewing maps with areas highlighted based on TDWG region standards. Both options allow the possibility of overlaying the data on WMS layers like Google earth or NASA satellite images.

These tools are available freely and will be maintained beyond the end of the EDIT project by the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. Alternatively we offer a mirror to institutions wishing to host their own copies of these services.