Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland: non-marine molluscs (1999 Atlas dataset)

Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland

Description

The records in this dataset are the published summary of the results of the Conchological Society's non-marine census which from 1876 to 1999. The dataset is the result of a piece of work to digitise the data primarily to a 10km square level (i.e. not the detailed records) and verify them ahead of publication in the 1999 atlas (Kerney, M. P. 1999. Atlas of the land and freshwater molluscs of Britain and Ireland. Colchester: Harley Books.). There is a programme of work to digitise the original more records which is available as a separate dataset. The data here are a copy of those originally held by the Biological Record Centre used to produce the atlas. All the survey data were collected by members of the Conchological Society. No further changes will be made to this dataset other than correcting any errors that are identified.

Geographic Description

The dataset covers Great Britain and Ireland. The sampling is biased towards England with a lower level of sampling in Scotland. Note that some effort was made ahead of the publication of the atlas to sample areas which had been under recorded.

Purpose

To gain baseline data about the distribution of non-marine molluscs in the UK and Ireland. This was primarily at the 10km square scale.

Data quality

Initial validation of the records was carried out by automatically checking that the grid reference occurred within the recorded Vice County stated. The distribution maps of the data were visually checked by Michael Kerney prior to publication.

Methods

The scheme relies heavily on adhoc records provided by Society members. However, prior to the publication of the atlas (1999) significant efforts were made to survey areas which had been undersampled. While efforts were made to try and include a range of habitats in these areas, the sampling was not as thorough and rarer species may well have been overlooked.

Citation

Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland (2017), Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland: non-marine molluscs (1999 Atlas dataset). Occurrence dataset

Rights

CC-BY-NC

Digitised records