Estonian Nature Information System(Eesti looduse infosüsteem – EELIS)

and Estonian Nature Observations Database

(Loodusvaatluste andmebaas – LVA)

Lauri Klein & Reigo Roasto

22. March 2013, Tartu

Estonian Nature Information System (EELIS)• EELIS

• is a pre-programmed desktop tool for registered users, to work with official data on Estonian nature (protected sites, species, habitats, monitoring data, water data, etc.), but also with related documents and geospatial data.

• is a geographic information system. It consists of the desktop software application that is working in Microsoft Windows environment and of the PostgreSQL geodatabase working in central server.

• is managed by the Estonian Environment Information Centre (EEIC). Most of the data is entered and managed by specialists working in EEIC (using official protocol for data-flows), but some of the data is also managed by the Environmental Board and Ministry of Environment.

Estonian Nature Information System (EELIS)

• EELIS includes data about

- nature protection: protected areas and nature monuments, sites of protected species, Natura 2000 habitats, woodland key habitats, areas of international importance, management plans of protected areas, sites of alien species and so on.

- water: water bodies, wells, water management.

- monitoring: monitoring stations, programs and results.

- others: islands, objects of primeval nature, cultural heritage objects, hunting areas, hunting trophies, sensitive areas.

Estonian Nature Information System (EELIS)• EELIS is one of the information systems that is connected directly to the Estonian

Environmental Register (EER) – an official state level register that is keeping most of the environmental data in Estonia. EELIS is holding and producing for EER following data: nature protection, hunting areas, alien species, sensitive areas, water recourses, water bodies, wastewater, environmental monitoring.

All necessary work for the EER

regarding data on natural objects is done with EELIS.

LVA is an open, web-based application for any species observation. It is

free and open to any registered user and is directly linked to EELIS.

Information about observation of protected species in LVA is sent by the

system to the Environmental Board, where conservation biologist is checking the observation (also on site) if needed and decides whether the observation should be registered also in EELIS (and thereby in EER).

LVA

EER

EELIS

Estonian Nature Observations Database (LVA)http://loodusvaatlused.eelis.ee

Estonian Nature Observations Database (LVA)http://loodusvaatlused.eelis.ee

• It has principle of Citizen Science - everyone can insert nature observations to the database, but due to IT security simple registration is still needed.

• Plan to create a public database where every people can add their own observations and to see all entered data on the public map arised about 10 years ago.

• Since 2008 LVA has been functional for public use.

• At the moment there are over 177 000 observations in LVA (it includes data from distribution atlases of birds and mammals).

• It is a result of cooperation between Estonian Environment Information Centre and Estonian Naturalists’ Society.

Estonian Nature Observations Database (LVA)http://loodusvaatlused.eelis.ee

• Database allows to insert observations about all groups of species (mammals, birds, vascular plants, reptiles, spiders, fungi etc)

• All entered observations have unconfirmed status at first. Observation has confirmed status after the specialist of species group (so called “editor”) estimates that it looks veritable.

• Only confirmed observations are visible on the public map application and even then not as points, but on a basis of UTM 10x10 grid.

Also there are map layers of protected objects on the public map application.

Click on the object

and you can open the list

of species in this area

or read more information

about this area

on EELIS webpage.

Thank you!