What's new?

WGP-1.0 Update - 23th January 2012

This update has made major changes to the species pages module. The user interfaces have been improved, with better navigation, filtering and searching capabilities. We have also added curated species pages content for 499 species. Species lists have been collected from authentic public databases and species pages stubs have been created along with the taxonomic hierarchy. We have provided links from the species pages and species lists to various public sites that contain species information.

With this update, the portal has total of 1083 species pages with curated content out of a total of 39,777 species lists with species stubs, taxonomic hierarchy and external links.

The detailed list of changes are given below:

What's new in this version?

  1. Species pages on the flora of the Nilgiris of the Western Ghats has been added. These are 262 tree species in this list contributed by the Keystone Foundation, Kotagiri.
  2. Species pages on the bat species of the Western Ghats have been contributed by Zoo Outreach Foundation, Coimbatore. This contains 50 bat species of the Western Ghats.
  3. Species pages on the endemic birds, mammals and amphibians of the Western Ghats. This dataset consists of 187 endemic species, of the Western Ghats giving the taxonomic hierarchy, distribution and habitat of the species. The data has been curated and compiled by Care Earth, Chennai, project partners for the Western Ghats project.
  4. About 40,000 species from GBIF with occurrences in India; about 5,400 species from IUCN red data list for the Indian region, and 2,500 species from FishBase, have been used to create species list stubs along with taxonomic hierarchy and with links to public databases like EOL, GBIF, IUCN and Wikipedia.
  5. User interfaces of the species pages have been improved. Species lists are sorted by the available content and can be filtered by different high level groups. External links, and IUCN conservation status, and group are presented in the summary section of species pages.
  6. The taxonomic browser has been enhanced with the facility for multiple hierarchies. A combined taxonomic hierarchy is used to allow navigation of all the content via a taxonomic browser. Different taxonomic hierarchies can be selected from the drop-down list of available taxonomies for the species.

WGP-0.9 Data Update - 10th December 2011

What's new in this version?

This update is focused on adding map layers to the portal. The following map layers have been added:

  1. Western Ghats Bird and Tree Transect Data, contributed by MO. Anand, CEPF Grantee.
  2. Rainfall Data for the Kerala Western Ghats by the French Institute at Pondicherry
  3. Distribution of Endemic Species of the Western Ghats by Care Earth, Chennai, Project Partner.
  4. Western Ghats Bats Distribution by Zoo Outreach, Coimbatore, Project Partner.

WGP-0.9 Update - 30th September 2011

This update is focused on adding more map content on the portal and creating better interfaces on the portal.

What's new in this version?

  1. The species pages now has an efficient solr based search interface. Species names and all descriptive text are indexed and are searchable. The search results are presented in a page with the image of the species. Clicking on the search result opens the species page. See Species Page
  2. Map user interfaces have been enhanced with a better user interface to explore maps, apply symbology to maps, and show selected features. We will enhance these features with a filter option in subsequent updates. See Map Module
  3. A URL link has been added to each layer that provides a URL to access the layer directly. Clicking on the link will directly take you to the map module with the referred map. Eg. Soil Map
  4. We have created a demo theme page. The theme page is an is an integrator of content on the portal with an explanation and links to other resources on the portal. The demo theme page is on the vegetation maps deployed in this update on the portal. Over the next few updates we will write many more theme pages and present the content available on the portal through these theme pages. See Theme on the Vegetation Maps of the Western Ghats
  5. We have put out species pages templates that can be used by contributors to provide species pages content to upload on the portal. In a future update, we will provide a facility where authenticated will be able to automatically upload species pages through the template. See Contribute section.
  6. We have added considerable rich content on the portal. We have added 27 map layers consisting of vegetation, soils, hydrology and administrative units of the Western Ghats. All the vegetation maps have been contributed by the French Institute of Pondicherry. The list of maps added are given below:

    7. Soil Maps

    • Western Ghats Reconnaissance Soil Map
    • Western Ghats Soil Carbon Estimates in 1977
    • Western Ghats Soil Carbon Estimates in 1999

    Watershed Maps

    • Western Ghats Sub-basins
    • Western Ghats Watersheds
    • Western Ghats Rivers
    • Western Ghats Dams and Reservoirs
    • Western Ghats Watershed Basins

    Vegetation Maps: Belgaum Dharwad Panaji

    • Floristic Types - Belgaum Dharwad Panaji
    • Forest Physiognomy - Belgaum Dharwad Panaji
    • Major Forest Types - Belgaum Dharwad Panaji

    Vegetation Maps: Mercara Mysore

    • Forest Physiognomy - Mercara Mysore
    • Floristic Types - Mercara Mysore
    • Major Forest Types - Mercara Mysore

    Vegetation Maps: Thiruvananthapuram Tirunelveli

    • Floristic Types - Thiruvananthapuram Tirunelveli
    • Forest Physiognomy - Thiruvananthapuram Tirunelveli
    • Major Forest Types - Thiruvananthapuram Tirunelveli

    Vegetation Maps: Coimbatore Thrissur

    • Major Forest Types - Coimbatore Thrissur
    • Forest Physiognomy - Coimbatore Thrissur
    • Floristic Types - Coimbatore Thrissur

    Vegetation Maps: Shimoga

    • Major Forest Types - Shimoga
    • Floristic Types - Shimoga
    • Forest Physiognomy - Shimoga

    Other Vegetation Maps

    • Vegetation Map Western Annamalai Area
    • Simple Vegetation map of the Western Ghats
    • Vegetation map of Kalakkad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve

    Other Maps

    • Beat and Range Map of Mudumalai Tiger Reserve and Gudalur Forest Division
    • Western Ghats Hornbill Survey

WGP-0.8 Update - 03 September 2011

The current version (augmented maps 0.8) was deployed on 03th September 2011. The code base is deployed on the social coding site github.

We plan to provide updates every month to the portal with new features and new data. We still have a long way to go to ensure full functionality of the portal. This beta portal is on agile development. We develop the portal as a set of web application modules and we plan to update the portal with each development iteration, so that the community gets good visibility to development. The development team also gets feedback on usage and utility of features.

What's new in this version?

  1. The species pages has been enhanced with a basic taxonomy browser. The browser also provides the functionality of navigating and getting to the species of choice.
  2. The species pages now has a look and feel for species pages with sparse content. If the content is sparse, we display all the content in one page, with the table of contents navigation. We hope this is helpful.
  3. We have populated a brief help field for each of the components of the species pages.
  4. We have rationalized the fields for species pages and the data entry options. We plan to have a sample spreadsheet and an xml that will be deployed on the portal. These can be used to create species pages on a format that can be directly uploaded on the portal.
  5. We have created an occurrence table of all known and reported species occurrences on the portal. This has been generated from the checklists and the map data that have some species data. This table forms the basis of the occurrence maps on the species pages. Currently, the occurrence records have over 1,12,127 entries with distribution locations of 13,991 species. This table will be innovatively used to crowd source species occurrence records through maps, checklists and species pages and displayed attractively.
  6. The collaboration module has been enhanced with pages for the partners on this project. The partners will accumulate and curate species and occurrence information for various taxa and different areas of the Western Ghats. These pages provide visibility to the partners with the ability to participate interactively on the portal.
  7. The portal has been updated with the following data:
    • We have added 90 Scarabaeidae (Dung Beetle) species contributed by Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan's Lab, ATREE, Bangalore.
    • We had added 518 species of flowing plants of the Western Ghats, contributed by The Biotik Team, The French Institute of Pondicherry.

WGP-0.7 Update - 08 August 2011

The current version (augmented maps 0.7) was deployed on 08th August 2011. The code base is deployed on the social coding site github.

The Western Ghats Portal (WGP) is under development and in beta. We will enhance the platform with more features and data. With this release, we are entering an agile development phase where we will be responsive to user inputs and deploy regular monthly updates.

What's new in this version?

  1. The map module has been re-engineered. It now runs with GeoServer 2.1.1 on a Java Application Server (Jetty). The look-and-feel has been changed for better usability. All maps including point layers are now served through the GeoServer. We have added a choice of styles for coloring and displaying each map layer. We have extended the GeoServer to allow embedding a fully-featured map into any other page. We will extend the map application and add more functionality in future releases.
  2. We have added the first-cut of the species pages and populated it with two example species. Over the next few months we will add more species and enrich species pages content.
  3. We have added a collaboration module which currently caters to Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund (CEPF) funded projects in Western Ghats. This is being regularly updated by the project grantees as well as the Regional Implementation Team (RIT).
  4. We have built a Document Management System (DMS) that allows uploading, annotating and tagging documents related to biodiversity and conservation. This is currently integrated with Collaboration Module.
  5. The checklist module has been re-engineered into a drupal framework and redeployed with search and filter capabilities.
  6. We now provide user login with either email id or user name.
  7. Deployed on new hardware, Intel Xeon X3470 @ 2.93GHz Quad core Processors, with 8 GB RAM running 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS operating system.
  8. The following map layers have been added.
    • A Checklist layer with the location of the checklists available. This layer will be periodically updated.
    • Western Ghats bird transect data combined from various studies, showing the transect location and the species found at each location.
    • MODIS fire map data for the Western Ghats for the years 2000 to 2010.