Stephen Coulson

I am currently project manager for Artportalen, a world leading open access database and analysis system describing the biodiversity of Sweden. The platform contains more than 59,000,000 mainly voluntary reports of some 30,000 species from Sweden and over 1,000,000 images.

When targeted or surveillance monitoring programmes are not available, data collected by the public is an alternative source of information and Artportalen is a prime example of this. As the comprehensive data set enables both spatial and temporal analysis, the Artportalen records are now frequently used by county and town councils in Sweden as a principle biodiversity resource and it has become an important tool in environmental planning and decision making.

Previous positions include periods as a lecturer and researcher focusing on the ecology and taxonomy of invertebrates in the Arctic at the universities of Leeds, Liverpool John Moores, Oslo, and 10 years at the University Centre in Svalbard before joining Artdatabanken (SLU, Uppsala) in 2016.

My main research Interests include the ecology of terrestrial polar invertebrates, arctic biogeography, dispersal, colonisation and ecosystem development, overwintering strategies (physiological and behavioural), Arctic invertebrate population dynamics and plant/insect interactions.