Counts of Species Occurrence Records in Forested and Non-forested Areas 1970-2022

Full description

This collection contains counts of species occurrence records from the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), between 1970 and 2022, for flora and fauna in forested and non-forested areas in Australia. These datasets informed analyses of forest-dwelling species for Australia’s State of the Forests Report.
Lineage: All species occurrence data aggregated by the ALA as of 2022-12-31 were downloaded and filtered using the galah R package to include only records:

• passing the ALA general data quality profile (https://support.ala.org.au/support/solutions/articles/6000240256-getting-started-with-the-data-quality-filters)
• occurring between the years 1970 and 2022
• with spatial coordinates
• included within the Kingdom Plantae or the Phylum Chordata
• identified to at least species level

Spatial coordinates of these records were then cross-referenced against the 2018 Forests of Australia continental dataset of forest extent to determine, at the species level, the number of records falling within forested and non-forested areas. Two derived datasets were created based on this:

• national_counts.csv
• state_counts.csv

national_counts.csv aggregates species-level counts of records in forested and non-forested areas across Australia, and state_counts.csv facets the counts based on the state/territory corresponding the the spatial coordinates of each record. The derived datasets include the following columns:

• ALA species ID
• Species scientific name
• Kingdom
• Phylum
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus
• Vernacular name
• State or territory (only in state_counts.csv)
• Count of records in forested areas
• Count of records in non-forested areas
• Total count of records
• Percentage of records in forested areas

The data_sources.csv file includes information on the source datasets within the Atlas of Living Australia that contributed to this collection.