ReserveMapper performs a spatial-bounding box search on coordinates acquired through harvested data. Observations without coordinates, or that are purposefully obscured (e.g. for endangered species) or that have low accuracy may not appear in ReserveMapper results. Occurrence data are harvested from third-party web services, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which serves data from the Berkeley Natural History Museums and other institutions. Species checklist data is available through the Berkeley Ecoinformatics Engine and Map of Life and AmphibiaWeb Species Lookup Service.

The Map of Life species checklist search looks at the centerpoint of the selected area's bounding box and searches in a 2km radius from that point for all species. The AmphibiaWeb Species Lookup search looks at a the centerpoint of the selected area's bounding box for Amphibian species only. All other checklists appearing in reservemapper are associated with particular reserves from legacy studies.

This site was made possible by a grant from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.