This glossary is here to help you with the terminology and words we use on our website. Some of the definitions are specific to the context of the National Education Nature Park programme. We'll add to the list over time as we learn from you what's helpful.
Glossary
Software for recording and visualising geographic data of many different types, that also allows you to view, manipulate and analyse this data.ArcGIS software is developed and managed by Esri. This software is usually paid-for, but it is freely available to schools. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems.
Community science, sometimes called citizen science, happens when people study and explore nature in their local community and share their observations to add to our collective understanding. The National Education Nature Park is one big community science project.
This is the app you'll use to add information about your site to our online map, including its boundary and habitats. Children and young people will also use the app to view and draw on the map when participating in Nature Park mapping activities. The app has been created by Esri.
GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems.
A biodiversity-recording app that allows children and young poeple to make and add one-off widlife observations to our Nature Park map. It has AI functionality that helps them to identify what they've seen.
Habitat mapping is the process of defining habitat areas and wildlife features on your site, by recording data on our digital maps. This is done by children and young people observing what's there while an adult enters it onto the map with an easy-to-use digital tool inn the FieldMaps app. Guidance on habitat mapping can be found here.
We'll be providing activities that help education settings to measure whether there's been an increase in biodiversity on their site. Increases in biodiversity take a long time to happen. The changes you make now may have a small impact in the short-term, over weeks or months, but will potentially have a much larger impact in the long term, over years or decades.
For this reason, to predict the likely biodiversity of an area, we'll be using computer models. These models will complement any actual measurements from your site. Using modelling in this way means we can predict further into the future. This helps us decide which habitat improvements will have the biggest positive impact based on data and evidence.
This is the account where all data collected by education settings for the Nature Park is stored. It's a public account so anyone can access the data. To submit data, for example about habitats, educators who register to join the Nature Park through this website will automatically get a login to the Nature Park ArcGIS online account with the same login details.
When mapping habitats, draw shapes that cover an area, for example of grass, to mark habitats on the map. You can also draw on the map lines to show things like fences and add points to mark things like birdboxes.
The Esri app that you can use to collect data about your site, including weather measurements, how shaded different parts are or how people feel about different parts of the site. This data is collected using a form with a series of questions.