EA Ecology Data MCP Server

EA Ecology Data

The Environment Agency Ecology and Fish Data API provides access to biological survey data collected across England's freshwater and marine environments.

Data Model

• Sites — Monitoring locations with coordinates (lat/long, easting/northing). Two types: BiosysFreshwaterSite and BiosysMarineSite. Each has a site_id URI and a local_id.
• Observations — Individual results from ecological surveys. Each records a taxon found, a measured property (e.g. units found), and a result value. Linked to a site and survey.
• Observation Types — Categories of biological observation (12 types): river diatoms, macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, marine benthos, marine phytoplankton, and freshwater/TRaC fish.
• Taxa — Species/genus taxonomy records with NBN keys, taxon groups, rank, and protected status.

Key Patterns

• Observations require at least one filter: site_id, observation_type, observable_property, or ultimate_feature_of_interest.
• Site IDs are URIs: http://environment.data.gov.uk/ecology/site/bio/{local_id}
• Observation type IDs are URIs from the /observation-types endpoint.
• Pagination uses limit and offset params (no underscore prefix on this API).
• Taxa endpoint returns a paginated list (no search/filter params supported).

Gotchas

• No auth: Completely open API. Be respectful of rate limits.
• Observations mandatory filter: Querying observations without any filter returns a 400 error.
• Site local_id: Use local_id param on the sites endpoint to find a specific site.
• Large result sets: Sites and taxa can return thousands of results — always set a reasonable limit.