Global Camera Trapping Inventory (GCTI) v.1.0: A worldwide inventory of camera-trapping studies for spatial biodiversity analysis

Camera traps have significantly advanced biodiversity monitoring by enabling standardized, noninvasive detection of medium- and large-sized wildlife across broad spatial scales. However, the lack of data sharing within the camera-trapping community, particularly during the early development of the field, has restricted the availability of public species-occurrence records and limited the integration of camera-trap evidence into global spatial analyses. Data sensitivity, especially for threatened species, has further constrained open access to study-level geographic records. To address this gap, the Global Camera Trapping Inventory (GCTI) v.1.0 was developed to compile project-level spatial information from 970 camera-trapping studies indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) between 1990 and 2023. The database includes an Excel file with 22 fields documenting study design, survey methods, recorded taxa, and associated metadata, together with three shapefile formats that capture geographic information at complementary spatial resolutions. The GCTI database was established to strengthen open, collaborative data sharing in biodiversity monitoring while preserving the spatial structure needed for research synthesis. By providing project-level shapefiles linked to specific regions and species, GCTI offers a spatially explicit resource for biodiversity, conservation, ecology, and biogeography research. Compared with existing platforms such as Wildlife Insights and eMammal, GCTI provides data suitable for meta-analyses, literature reviews, and spatial overlap analyses with global biodiversity resources, such as GBIF and the IUCN Red List. To facilitate data access and application, an interactive web platform was developed to enable online searching, visualization, and download (https://biodiversityoptimization.shinyapps.io/gcti_v1/).