In this ongoing project I'm exploring the collection of genetic samples of birds that are held at INPA, Manaus. These are genetic material mostly from amazonian bird species that the institution preserves for scientific research.
I had previously revised this dataset with Microsoft Excel and Python, correcting records, standardizing some of the columns and georeferencing all records when possible.
My goal here was to explore the database in order to provide the institution:
- Some basic information about the collection's content in terms of taxonomic representativeness, type of material, methods of collection, and others.
- Identify potential data entries that need to be improved, standardized or better filled.
- Provide information to help the institution to make data-based decisions on future expeditions, collecting practices, etc...
- Provide data that will be helpfull in the future to acquire financial resources for research and improve public policy regarding biological collections.
- Give the people of Amazonia information about their genetic resources and the valuable public material the institution holds.
Although most results are available at the jupyter notebook and gis folder I'm now working on a final digested report more accessible to the scientific and non scientific community.
**The original dataset will hopefully be available soon.
A visual example of how powerful these analyses can be. In white and blue, you can see places with no or very few samples in the collection. This means, places we need to go and explore more.
