Global Biodiversity Information Facility
GBIF Occurrence API
Global species occurrence records
Museum, research, and citizen-science records with spatial, temporal, taxonomic, and licence filters; bulk downloads receive a citable DOI.
“After urban expansion, which species observations move outward—and where did observer effort simply change?”
Continuously ingested from publishers
Global · specimens, observations, and occurrences
Search without login; free account for bulk downloads
Dataset-level CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-NC; filter to the first two for open reuse
JSON · Darwin Core · CSV · API · DOI download
Per dataset: CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-NC; this library recommends filtering to CC0 / CC BY for open reuse
Cite the GBIF download DOI and follow its citation list for each publisher or dataset.
Freeze the DOI and query, exclude unsuitable CC BY-NC records, and review sensitive coordinates, sampling bias, duplicates, and geospatial uncertainty.