Importing Data from GBIF

[Ben Howes]

Dear All,

I am a masters student in conservation ecology looking to learn to use Maxent,

I have seen that there is a large amount of occurrence data on the 'Global Biodiversity Information Facility' and am looking to use that to get to grips with Maxent, however when I download the data and open it in excel all of the data is in a single column,

I am not sure if this is to do with the format that GBIF downloads to or my excel programme, and was hoping that someone could shed some light on this?

Thanks,

Ben

[Alani G]

After downloading and saving the GBIF data, you can format it in Excel.
The quickest way is to find the file and try to open it in Excel.
To do this, open Excel, under file select open and locate your file.
Once your file is selected, it should prompt a "Text Import Wizard: dialogue box.
Make sure under "Original Data Type" the "Delimited" radio button is selected. You can select the other option if the data nicely separate into proper columns in the box below that shows the preview of the spread sheet.
Select next.
I believe the data from GBIF are separated by Tab, so select this option. If not, toy around with the other options until the preview is formatted correctly.
The rest should be straight forward, but you can post back here if not.

Otherwise, you can just open the data or paste it into a spreadsheet.
With single column containing your data highlighted, select the "Data" tab. Then select "Text to Columns"
Same as previous.

You can also download it through R.
library(dismo)
library(maps)
data(wrld_simpl)
plot(wrld_simpl, col = "light gray", axes = T)
ce <- gbif("Clarkia", "exilis", geo = T)
ce<-ce[,c("species","lat","lon")] #just extracts the lat longs and species name
map(database="world", ylim=c(20,50), xlim=c(-130,-70), col="grey")
points(ce$lon, ce$lat, col = "black", cex =.5, pch=2)
write.table(ce, file="C_excilis.csv") #writes table into your current working directory, open as any other CSV

Alani