The Area Report options generate a report for a selected region/area. There is a simpler interactive version and a PDF area report that contains more detail.

  • Note 1: The Detailed area report can take more than 10 minutes to generate. Please therefore be cautious about the size of the area you are reporting on. We will endeavour to develop a faster method, but there is a lot of data to find, collate and report.
  • Note 2: You can select the area and then run the report, or select the tool and define the area as part of the process.


To run an area report:


1. From the menu option, select Tools and then Area Report - interactive.




2. Select an area to analyse and click Next.


In the example below, My Rectangle is a predefined area. Alternately, you could use the Define new area option to use a different area. This does involve an additional step. Please refer to Add Area for additional information.




The following details then appear in the pop-up Area Report:

  1. Area (sq km): The area in square kilometres of the selected area. 
    1. Note: The projection used does not permit use of a bounding box > 85 degrees north and south of the equator. We have therefore estimated the reduced area of the bounding box to be ~510,000,000 square kilometres.
  2. Number of species: A list of all unique species derived from the occurrence records for the area. Clicking on the List button will produce a species list. Note that only the ‘most-preferred’ common name (if any) will be listed for each species. The list can be downloaded in CSV format.
  3. Number of species – spatially valid only: This is a potential subset of (2) above without any species that have any type of flag questioning their location. For example, a record of a marine species on land (or vice versa) will be flagged.
  4. Number of endemic species: This list will contain those species that only occur within the area. The list can be downloaded in CSV format.
  5. Number of endemic species – spatially valid only: The same as (3) above except for endemic species.
  6. Occurrences: The number of point occurrence records for all species in the area (observations, specimens etc.). 
    1. The Map all button will map all occurrences in the area (only available if the active area contains <= 2,000,000 occurrences). 
    2. Sample button: Will allow the user to select environmental or contextual layers and sample for those layers at the occurrence points. 
    3. View Records: Will open a new window displaying all the details of the records in the area.
  7. Occurrences – spatially valid only: As for (3) and (5) above. Returns only those records that do not have have any spatially validity flags set.
  8. Expert distributions: The number of species for which we have expert-defined areas of their distributions that intersect the area of interest. List: Will list the species and some associated detail and allow for the polygon/s for individual species to be mapped. The list can be downloaded in CSV format.
  9. Checklist areas : “Checklists” are lists of species that are known to occur within a defined area. If such an area occurs within the area selected for the area report, they will be numbered here. The specific location of the species in the area is unknown, only that they are known to occur within that checklist area. List: Enables the checklist areas to be listed and optionally mapped.
  10. Checklist species: The number of species that have been assigned to Checklist areas that intersect the area. List: Will list the species that occur within the checklist areas. Any of the listed species can be mapped from this list.
  11.  Journalmap documents: The number of documents in JournalMap that have a reference to an area that intersects the area of interest.
  12. Gazetteer points: The number of gazetteer locations from the 2010 Australian gazetteer. This option was added (among other reasons) to help identify ‘islands’ without formal names.
  13. Various Lists such as Migratory species, Threatened’ species (species that have any conservation status via IUCN, State/Territory or Federal agencies) – based on the Threatened lists in http://lists.ala.org.au, ‘Invasive’ species (species that have been deemed in any way invasive in any part of the Australian region) – based on the ‘Invasive’ lists in http://lists.ala.org.au


The Detailed Area Report (PDF) also contains for the area-

  1. Spatial context map
  2. Map of national Dynamic Land Cover
  3. Map of Global Terrestrial Ecoregions
  4. Map of Global Marine Ecoregions
  5. Map of Global Freshwater Ecoregions
  6. Further links
  7. References

Preliminary fields that may be included

Points of interest:  In MERIT (https://fieldcapture.ala.org.au/) a point of interest (POI) is a spatially referenced attribute of a site. It has a name, description, type, coordinate and bearing (optional). We currently only support one type of POI (ie. photo points), but the intent is also support other types such as: natural feature, cultural feature, works area, observation point/hide, trap site, etc. Photo points are a special kind of POI as, when they are associated with a site and that site is associated with an activity with a “photo point” output, images for the photo points can be recorded as part of the data collected for a record event.


Example of an interactive Area Report




Example of a Table of Contents for a detailed Area Report (PDF)


Table of Contents of the Detailed Area Report (PDF)