Who operates Gaia Guide?

The Gaia Guide Association was established to oversee the operation of the Gaia Guide website and the related mobile field guide applications. It has responsibility for producing and managing those resources with a view toward enabling people to be better informed about living species, both in Australia and overseas.

Who owns the data on Gaia Guide?

It is fundamentally important that the text and multimedia resources on Gaia Guide remain usable by others. Much of the information has been contributed by members of the public or has been gleaned from other Internet resources that also make their content available for reuse by others under suitable licensing conditions. The text content of this website is owned in trust by the Gaia Guide Association Incorporated and made available under a Creative Commons License. The multimedia resources on this website are owned by the original contributors and are available for reused under the licensing terms imposed by those contributors. More information on the content licensing is available on the Gaia Guide policies page.

Who can contribute to Gaia Guide?

Many have already contributed to this website. It draws upon scientific data made available by data aggregators like the Atlas of Living Australia and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. It also draws on suitably licensed materials on sites like Wikipedia and Flickr. It has also benefited from a wide range of direct contributors including:

• Staff at the Lizard Island Research Station;
• Teachers and students at schools and colleges; and
• Individual enthusiasts with a keen interest in a particular group of species or a particular location.

Most of the content has been contributed by the broader public. While publicly accessible government-sponsored databases do provide a great framework for Gaia Guide, the detail that helps with accurate species recognition generally comes from those with a keen interest in the natural world. Gaia Guide aims to make it easy for those people to share their knowledge in a way that facilitates distribution in mobile field guide applications to others thinking of taking a similar interest.

If you have an interest in a particular species or group of species please consider becoming involved.