Open access digital tools’ contribution for mapping and monitoring of biodiversity

Abstract

Biodiversity constitutes a source of natural richness of life on Earth, including all the variety of living organisms. The United Nations Organization proclaimed the period between 2011 and 2020 as the International Decade of Biodiversity. Knowing that the majority of the existing information about species distribution is not promptly reachable, the adoption of Georeferencing tolls as a brace for mapping, managing and handling of the biodiversity stands out. The present essay aims to describe the development and implementation of the Digital Atlas of Herpetofauna from the state of Pernambuco, a new digital tool of open access, which integrates data about species, their natural histories and their spacial distribution. For its development, the Joomla!, version 1.5.26, was adopted as Content Management System and the MySQL as Database System, these were integrated to the Library System PROJ.4 in order to enable graphic projections. The result is the developed tool itself, applying the combination of geographic data stored by mapping based on web browser. This study presented advantages found in the use of open access digital tools for mapping and monitoring species, pointing that its use is a very effective way to aggregate and communicate information about biodiversity.