The GBIF portal offers a range of services to support the use of biodiversity data in other applications and analyses, and additional services and tools are being added as the portal evolves. All users of the portal are expected to adhere to the GBIF Data Use Agreement.

Downloading data

The Occurrence Search page allows users to download occurrence records in various formats. After searching for records of interest, select the ‘Download Records’ link from the ‘Actions’ box and follow the instructions. These instructions will explain the options and download formats that are currently available.

Web services

The portal includes a range of web services that can be used by other portals and applications to directly access XML-formatted GBIF data. These include:

• Taxon data service – provides a range of options for viewing information on the names and classifications used by the different datasets accessible through the GBIF portal. Data are returned using the TDWG Taxon Concept Schema. 
• Occurrence record data service – provides a range of filters for selecting occurrence records. The response formats that are currently supported include TDWG Darwin Core records and KML (for use with Google Earth). 
• Occurrence density data service – returns summary counts of occurrence records by 1.0 degree cell for a single taxon, country, dataset, data provider or data network. The currently supported response formats include a simple XML format and KML (for use with Google Earth). 
• Dataset metadata service – returns metadata relating to the datasets accessible through the GBIF portal. The currently supported response format is a simple XML structure. 
• Data provider metadata service – returns metadata on the data providers sharing data through the GBIF portal. The currently supported response format is a simple XML structure.
• Data network metadata service – returns metadata on the data networks connected to the GBIF portal. The currently supported response format is a simple XML structure.

See the web service documentation for more details on these services. Note that responses from these web services include styling instructions to make them easier to read and use in a web browser. The documentation includes instructions for disabling this feature if you don’t need it.

Institutions, organisations or individuals interested in performing research studies using GBIF mediated primary biodiversity data derived from the GBIF global network of data publishers can request access to the full database.

The GBIF Secretariat can provide privileged access to the full primary biodiversity data. Our aim is to allow researchers to benefit from a more efficient and direct access to these data than is currently provided via the GBIF Portals and web services.

Access is given to a full database backup of the entire primary biodiversity data derived from GBIF’s global network of data publishers. We strive to export these data from the  Portal on a monthly basis and make them available for download.

The requesting party must agree to comply with GBIF policies, including:

• Restricting the use of the raw primary biodiversity data to facilitate the processing of data for integration. These raw data will not be distributed to third parties unless the third parties have already signed this Letter of Agreement with the Secretariat.
• Continuing to comply with GBIF data usage guidelines as defined in the GBIF Data Use Agreement.