An  EU BON workshop took place on 20-23 July in Manaus, Brasil for a targeted group of representatives of the different EU BON WPs or task forces. The workshop was attended by European representatives of EU BON and INPA to discuss potential options to further the integration between European teams and the Brazilian team.

Among topics discussed at the workshop were issues of designing and running biodiversity monitoring observatories (i.e. optimization and guidelines for planning biodiversity monitoring); analyses of biodiversity data to be addressed for assessing changes and patterns; and linkage of (meta-) data to EU BON portal.

  
Images from the workshop; Credit: William Magnusson (INPA) & Israel Peer (GlueCAD)

Being hosted in Manaus, this workshop also looked into facilitationg the integration of Brazilian and European expertise, for instance by updating about the progress made by Brazil in starting participatory resource monitoring in Brazilian National parks and the development of databases to integrate this information. 

Besides presentation and discussions, INPA organized an excursion to show their log-term biodiversity monitoring field sites (RAPELD) and to explain the rationale and methodology behind their design and organization. 

      
Images from the excursion; Credit: Charlie Marsh 

Data collection and analysis are at the core of modern research, and often take months or even years during which researchers remain uncredited for their contribution. A new plugin to a workflow previously developed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Pensoft, and tested with datasets shared through GBIF and DataONE, now makes it possible to convert metadata into a manuscript for scholarly publications, with a click of a button.

Pensoft has currently implemented the feature for biodiversity, ecological and environmental data. Such records are either published through GBIF or deposited at DataONE, from where the associated metadata can be converted directly into data paper manuscripts within the ARPHA Writing Tool, where the authors may edit and finalize it in collaboration with co-authors and peers and submit it to the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) with another click. Until now, the GBIF metadata have been exported into an RTF file. The new feature will be also part of future Pensoft projects, including the recently announced Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO) Journaland the forthcoming Ecology and Sustainability Data Journal.

The concept of the data paper was introduced in the early 2000's by the Ecological Society of America in order to solve issues of handling big data and to make the metadata and the corresponding datasets discoverable and citable. It was then brought to the attention of the biodiversity community in 2011 as a result of a joint GBIF and Pensoft project and later implemented in the routine publishing process in all Pensoft journals.

Since then, Pensoft has been working with GBIF, and subsequently DataONE to automate the process of converting metadata into a human-readable data paper format. The novel workflow means that with only a couple of clicks, publishers of datasets on either GBIF, DataONE or any other portal storing metadata in the same format, may submit a manuscript for peer-review and open access citable publication in BDJ.

The process is simple, yet it brings a lot of benefits. Publishing data does not only mean a citable publication and, thus, credit to the authors and the repository itself, but it also provides the option to improve your work and collect opinion though peer-review. BDJ also shortens the distance between "narrative (text)" and "data" publishing.

"Metadata descriptions (e.g., data about the data) are of primary importance for data dissemination, sharing and re-use, as they give essential information on content, scope, purpose, fitness for use, authorship, usage rights, etc. to any potential user. Authoring detailed metadata in repositories can seem a tedious process, however DataONE users will now benefit from direct export of already created metadata into data paper manuscripts and have even better exposure of their work through discoverability mechanisms and scholarly citations," commented Dr Amber Budden, DataONE Director for Community Engagement and Outreach

"It is great to reap the fruits of a process that started back in 2010. The automated streamlining of biodiversity data between repositories and publisher is an elegant feature that makes publishing a data paper an easy and rewarding process to crown scientists data collection efforts and ensure its use and re-use," added Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Managing Director of Pensoft.

More detailed information on how data authors could use the workflow can be found on the Pensoft blog.

References:

Chavan V, Penev L (2011) The data paper: a mechanism to incentivize data publishing in biodiversity science. BMC Bioinformatics. 12(Suppl 15):S2. DOI: 10.1186/1471-2105-12-S15-S2

The work has been partially supported by the EC-FP7 EU BON project (ENV 308454, Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network) and the ITN Horizon 2020 project BIG4(Biosystematics, informatics and genomics of the big 4 insect groups: training tomorrow's researchers and entrepreneurs), under Marie Sklodovska-Curie grant agreement No. 542241.

Substantial amount of documented occurrence records is awaiting publication stored in repositories and data indexing platforms, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD Systems), or Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio). In order to streamline the authoring process, save taxonomists time, and provide a workflow for peer-review and quality checks, Pensoft has introduced an innovative feature that makes it possible to easily import occurrence records into a taxonomic manuscript.

Prior to this development, Pensoft's ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) only used the "upload from Excel" approach for this workflow. Although this method significantly simplified the process of importing materials and is actively used by the authors, it still required one extra transposition step.

Now, we added a new even more user-friendly option. By simply specifying an identifier (ID) in the relevant box, the new import plugin allows for occurrence data, stored at GBIF, BOLD systems, or iDigBio, to be be directly inserted into the manuscript. It all happens in the user-friendly environment of the AWT, where the imported data can be then edited before submission to the Biodiversity Data Journal.

Not having to retype or copy/paste species occurrence records, the authors save a lot of efforts. Moreover, they automatically import them in a structured Darwin Core format, which can be easily downloaded from the article text into structured data by anyone who needs the data for reuse after publication.

Another important aspect of the workflow is that it will serve as a platform for peer-review, publication and curation of raw data, that is of unpublished individual data records coming from collections or observations stored at GBIF, BOLD and iDigBio.

The work has been partially supported by the EC-FP7 EU BON project (ENV 308454, Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network) and the ITN Horizon 2020 project BIG4(Biosystematics, informatics and genomics of the big 4 insect groups: training tomorrow's researchers and entrepreneurs), under Marie Sklodovska-Curie grant agreement No. 542241.

Post-doctoral scientist position is open for the project "Towards an integrated prediction of Land & Sea Responses to global change in the Mediterranean Basin" (LaSeR-Med), which focusses on integrated socio-ecological modelling. The duration of the contract is initially one year, with a possible extension for a second year, depending on the initial results. The post-doc will be based within the Mediterranean Institute of marine and terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecology (IMBE) in Aix-en-Provence, France. The project is part of the Labex OT-Med (http://www.otmed.fr/).

Applicants should hold a doctoral degree in physics, chemistry, microbiology, geosciences, environmental sciences or a related field of science. They should be familiar with modelling biogeochemical interactions between ecosystems and capable to further develop existing numerical ecosystem models. Programming skills (C) and modelling experience are therefore mandatory. Knowledge of R and of Unix/Linux environment will be an advantage. The candidate should have good written and oral communication skills. For work, good skills in the English language will be essential.

The project:

Terrestrial and marine ecosystems are connected through groundwater, river discharge and nutrient outflows (especially N and P). River catchments in the Mediterranean are N-intensive regions, mostly due to intensive agriculture in the North and to crop N2 fixation or food & feed import in the South. The fraction of nutrient reaching the sea constitutes significant anthropogenic forcing of many marine biological processes. For simulating the dynamics of the first levels of the marine food web (from nutrients to jellyfishes), the ocean biogeochemical model, Eco3M-MED, used and developed by the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO) within OT-Med, currently uses N and P measurements at river mouths, e.g. for the Rhône.

In order to estimate the impacts of global change on the functioning of marine ecosystems, the project aims at modeling the dependency of N and P outflows to the Mediterreanean sea toward land management. Land management is modelled as part of the agro-ecosystem model LPJmL (Bondeau et al., 2007), that has been especially adapted to the Mediterranean cropping systems (Fader et al., 2015). Among others, LPJmL simulates the daily carbon and water cycles, and the river discharges to the sea. Following existing approaches in the scientific literature, the post-doc will implement the nutrient N and P transfer in LPJmL, covering the net nutrient inputs to the river catchments by accounting for the processes occurring at the agro-ecosystem level (N2 biological fixation, fertilization, atmospheric deposition) and the net food and feed imports. Since only a minor fraction of the net nutrient inputs from Mediterranean basins reaches the sea, the retention along the nutrient cascade will have to be added to the LPJmL river routing scheme, similarly to the method used by the Riverstrahler model. Once the nutrient transfers have been introduced into LPJmL, simulations will be validated using current climate and land use forcing for comparisons with the existing observations from river outlets. Finally, future conditions will be assessed by using the model with scenarios of changing regional climate and land use / land management.

Your application:

Applications should contain a suitable motivation letter describing your anticipated role in the project, a CV, a list of scientific publications and the names of at least two scientists that can be contacted for references. They must be sent to Ms. Gabriela Boéri (gabriela.boeri@imbe.fr). Please prepare your application as a single file in pdf-format.

Questions about the project or the position can be directed to Dr. Alberte Bondeau (alberte.bondeau@imbe.fr). The position will be filled as soon as a suitable candidate has been found – work should start soon after that date. The salary and contract conditions will be determined according to standards set by Aix-Marseille University – questions in this regard can be directed to Sophie Pekar (pekar@otmed.fr).

Butterfly monitoring at local, national, regional, and global levels is the topic of the first of the GEO BON Technical Series reports produced to provide stakeholders with practical guidance for biodiversity conservation.

The report is jointly produced by GEO BON, EU BON, UNEP-WCMC, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Dutch Butterfly Conservation, as a follow up of a joint workshop, which took place in December 2014, to catalyse the process for the development of global butterfly monitoring guidelines and the creation of a new specialist butterfly monitoring group.

The report titled "Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring" provides a suite of standard field protocols that can measure butterfly population change over various spatial and temporal scales, and that can be applied in any part of the world.

The importance of butterfly monitoring programmes lies in the fact that they provide information about population trends and changes that can be then used as indicators of biodiversity and environmental change outside of the butterfly context.

The guidelines are intended for scheme coordinators, i.e. people wishing to establish butterfly monitoring in any part of the world. The guidelines explain how to set up butterfly monitoring that can provide consistent and comparable results between sites and between years, consistent with international standards.

The ambition behind this new publication is that butterfly populations around the world are well monitored, thereby providing vital information on how these insect populations and other parts of biodiversity are changing. This information is important for feeding into local, national, regional, and global decision-making to help reduce biodiversity loss as well as raising awareness of butterflies and biodiversity in general.

Original Source:

Van Swaay, C., Regan, E., Ling, M., Bozhinovska, E., Fernandez, M., Marini-Filho, O.J., Huertas, B., Phon, C.-K., Kőrösi, A., Meerman, J., Pe’er, G., Uehara-Prado, M., Sáfián, S., Sam, L., Shuey, J., Taron, D., Terblanche, R., and Underhill, L. (2015). Guidelines for Standardised Global Butterfly Monitoring. Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network, Leipzig, Germany. GEO BON Technical Series 1, 32pp.

A joint WP2/3/4/6/7 workshop took place on 23-24 November 2015 in Cambridge, UK. The overall goal of the workshop was to identify synergies and overlapping objectives across WP3/4 and 6/7 and beyond and to thereby identify applications of EU BON’s tools to decision-making, including at the policy level.

The idea for this small, focused workshop emerged as a result of the popularity and outreach achieved by the Aquamaps North-Sea fisheries infographic, developed under WP6. This infographic has demonstrated how the AquaMaps modelling tool can help answer a clear policy or question relevant to decision-making.

Under EU BON, WP3 and WP4 have developed some powerful tools, and more are in the making. The next challenge for EU BON is to use these tools to address policy-relevant issues/questions and to link EU-BON’s modelling capacity to policy needs. Producing cutting-edge innovations is important, but their implementation for policy and decision-making needs is what has real impact.

This is what the Cambridge workshop was about - bringing different players together to identify the right ways to make EU BON innovation policy relevant.

Outcomes of the meeting:

• An improved vision of how to ‘market’ EU BON’s products for end-users;

• A better understanding of the end-users and the barriers that they face in accessing and using biodiversity data tools; and

• Improved collaboration between EU BON Work Packages and a coherent vision for future synergies.

A new article published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering looks at how Aphia, the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS),  can Serve the taxonomic community and the field of biodiversity informatics.

Abstract

The Aphia platform is an infrastructure designed to capture taxonomic and related data and information, and includes an online editing environment. The latter allows easy access to experts so they can update the content of the database in a timely fashion. Aphia is the core platform that underpins the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and its more than 80 related global, regional and thematic species databases, but it also allows the storage of non-marine data. The content of Aphia can be consulted online, either by individual users or via machine-to-machine interactions. Aphia uses unique and stable identifiers for each available name in the database through the use of Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs). The system not only allows the storage of accepted and unaccepted names, but it also documents the relationships between names. This makes it a very powerful tool for taxonomic quality control, and also allows the linking of different pieces of information through scientific names, both within the Aphia platform and in relation to externally hosted databases. Through these LSIDs, Aphia has become an important player in the field of (marine) biodiversity informatics, allowing interactions between its own taxonomic data and e.g., biogeographic databases. Some applications in the field of biodiversity informatics encompass the coupling of species traits and taxonomy, as well as the creation of diverse, expert validated data products that can be used by policy makers, for example. Aphia also supplies (part of) its content to other data integrators and the infrastructure can be used to host orphan databases in danger of being lost.

Original Source: http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/3/4/1448/htm

A recently completed benchmark survey of common plants provides a comprehensive dataset of vascular plant diversity and abundance in South Northumberland and Durham, contributing an additional 35,000 observations to the 200,000 observations collected by local recorders since the turn of the millennium.

Apart from contributing an updated inventory of vascular plant diversity, the survey is intended to be used as a reference point with which to identify change in the countryside and study the drivers of biodiversity change in the North-east of England.

Changes in the abundance of rare species have little impact on other species, but change in the abundance of common species can have cascading effects on whole ecosystems. The new survey provides a solid foundation that can be used to qualify the abundance of common species and compare against previous and future studies.

The distribution of heather predicted from the common plant survey data. This is one of the region's most characteristic species and one that many other organisms rely upon for food and cover.

The survey was part of the North-East Common Plants Survey Project, conducted over four years and required volunteers to go to various places. Some surveyed post-industrial brown-field sites, while others walked for miles across bleak moorland to reach sites high in the hills. Although these moors are arguably wilder and natural, the industrial wastelands turn out to be far more biodiverse.

Botanical surveying continues in the region despite the end of the project. Volunteers continue to monitor rare plants in the region and are currently working towards the next atlas of Britain and Ireland, coordinated by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland.

This survey is also among the first one to make use of the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) functionality, jointly developed by EU BON and GBIF, that allows the easy export and exposure of datasets to maximize their discoverability and reuse. The survey was published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, providing easy and streamlined publication of GBIF data via a variety of newly introduced plugins.

Original Source:

Groom Q, Durkin J, O'Reilly J, Mclay A, Richards A, Angel J, Horsley A, Rogers M, Young G (2015) A benchmark survey of the common plants of South Northumberland and Durham, United Kingdom. Biodiversity Data Journal 3: e7318. doi: 10.3897/BDJ.3.e7318

EU BON has signed memoranda of understanding with almost thirty institutions and projects from across Europe and outside to state its desire for collaboration and exchange of expertise. Among the early partners in this list is the LTER-Europe group, focussed on the integration of scientific research  and ecosystem research approaches, including the human dimension.

Dr. Mark Frenzel who took part in the EU BON Third Stakeholder roundtable in December 2015, gives an overview of his impressions from the meeting as well as his ideas on the co-work between LTER-Europe and EU BON.

Credit: Florian Wetzel

Q: The LTER-Europe network looks at conceptualizing Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER) as an essential component of world-wide efforts to better understand ecosystems. How is the network planning to achieve this?

A: This is / will be achieved mainly by funded project work. Actually the H2020 eLTER project is the most important backbone, an ESFRI eLTER initiative is running too. In terms of content there are several challenges which need to be addressed: (1) Harmonisation in terms of what and how is being measured at LTER sites, (2) collection and representation of metadata about sites, actors and data sets within the web tool DEIMS, (3) open access of data and DOI registration of data sets, (4) considering the human component as a major driver for changes in ecosystems by including socio-economy and socio-ecology in the LTER approach.      
 

Q: How would EU BON and its planned European biodiversity portal be beneficial to LTER-Europe and its aims in the next years?

A: Biodiversity is not the only, but an important focus within LTER. It depends on the services and benefits connected with this portal and its long-term perspective. The most important added value I would see in an elaborated framework-based agreement on the set of  "essential biodiversity variables" which will be a compromise between importance and feasibility. This selection process should be well tuned with the relevant players in this field.
 

Q: The LTER-Europe network includes several hundreds of sites that are collecting large amounts of data  – how can this data be used for improving our knowledge of biodiversity, particularly for policy-relevant questions?

A: The big advantage (and potential) of LTER-Europe sites is the coverage in terms of geography and bioms, the general shortcoming is in the heterogeneous reasons why these sites have been set up (e.g. for monitoring air pollution) and that there is no targeted funding (in terms of a specific research question) for all sites.

Not all sites are dealing with biodiversity data. First, suitable sites need to be selected according to metadata in DEIMS (https://data.lter-europe.net/deims/). Second, data sets according to fitting topics have to be compiled (perhaps no easy task, as datasets up to now are not exhaustively documented). Site managers of representative sites (depending on the question to be addressed) could be motivated to create a common standardised data sets (needs external funding depending on the resources necessary for the task or at least a very attractive research question) responding to e.g. policy needs. Moreover, the long-term knowledge of site coordinators about the development and the important drivers of change at their sites (e.g. by assessing ecosystem services) comprises valuable meta information about the context of data sets.

Data obtained from the sites could potentially help with policy-relevant questions like status of endangered species or status of ecosystem service relevant system parameters which could be extracted from LTER sites.
 

Q: According to you what are the next three most urgent step in order to achieve better understanding of ecosystem services and their benefits for policy, economics and society?

A: (1) reliable data and suitable scale of data, (2) understanding the effect of scale on ecosystem services, (3) make use of large networks to approach this issue, bring the results down to a scale understandable for the layman.
 

About LTER-Europe:

Long-Term Ecosystem Research (LTER) is an essential component of world-wide efforts to better understand ecosystems. LTER contributes to the knowledge base informing policy and to the development of management options in response to the Grand Challenges under Global Change. From the beginning (around 2003) the design of LTER-Europe has focussed on the integration of natural sciences and ecosystem research approaches, including the human dimension. LTER-Europe was heavily involved in conceptualizing socio-ecological research (LTSER). As well as LTER Sites, LTER-Europe features LTSER Platforms, acting as test infrastructures for a new generation of ecosystem research across European environmental and socio-economic gradients.

Creating and maintaining a biodiversity data collection has been a much-needed worldwide exercise for years, yet there is no single standard on how to do this. This has led to a myriad of datasets often incompatible with each other. To make the most out of biodiversity data and to ensure that its use for environmental monitoring and conservation is both easy and legal, EU BON published recommendations that provide consistent Europe-wide Data Publishing Guidelines and Recommendations in the EU BON Biodiversity Portal.

The report "Data Policy Recommendations for Biodiversity Data. EU BON Project Report" featured in the Research Ideas & Outcomes (RIO) journal, is the first contribution in a pioneering comprehensive project outputs compilation taking advantage of RIO's unique option to publish collections of project results.

Lyubomir Penev presenting the EU BON collection in RIO at the project's biodiversity data sharing and data publishing workshop in Sofia; Credit: Pensoft

Biodiversity data and information provide important knowledge for many biological, geological, and environmental research disciplines. Additionally, they are crucial for the development of strong environmental policies and the management of natural resources. Information management systems can bring together a wealth of information and a legacy of over 260 years of biological observations which are now dispersed in a myriad of different documents, institutions, and locations.

EU BON aims to build a comprehensive "European Biodiversity Portal" that will incorporate currently scattered Europe-wide biodiversity data, while at the same time helping to realize a substantial part of the worldwide Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). To achieve this ambitious plan, EU BON identifies the strong need for a coherent and consistent data policy in Europe to increase interoperability of data and make its re-use both easy and legal.

"Biodiversity data and information should not be treated as commercial goods, but as a common resource for the whole human society. The EU BON data sharing agreement is an important step in this direction," comments the lead author of the report Dr. Willi Egloff from Plazi, Switzerland.

In its report, the EU BON project analysis available single recommendations and guidelines on different topics. On this basis, the report provides structured guidelines for legislators, researchers, data aggregators, funding agencies and publishers to be taken into consideration towards providing standardized, easy-to-find, re-shareable and re-usable biodiversity data.

"We are extremely happy that EU BON is among the first to take advantage of our project outputs collections option in RIO. The first report they are publishing with us deals with issues of opening up data, and digitizing and collecting scientific knowledge, all close to RIO's mission to open up the research process and promote open science," says Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Founder and Publisher of RIO.

Original Source:

Egloff W, Agosti D, Patterson D, Hoffmann A, Mietchen D, Kishor P, Penev L (2016) Data Policy Recommendations for Biodiversity Data. EU BON Project Report. Research Ideas and Outcomes2: e8458. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8458

Applications for a Project Manager position for the Horizon 2020 project called COOP+ are now open at the University of Granada (Spain). This project aims to foster the cooperation among EU environmental research infrastructures (EISCAT, ICOS, EMSO, LifeWatch) and their international counterparts (NEON, TERN, AMERIFLUX, LBA, ILTER, OOI, AMISR, IMOS, etc.).

The Project Manager will be in contact with the project consortium on a daily basis to foster the cooperation among RIs. He/she will be responsible for communication with project partners (organizing meetings, workshops and videoconferences during the project duration, maintenance of web page). He/she will also participate in writing reports, timely production of deliverables as well as scientific outputs. He/she will join the "Laboratory of ecology" located in theAndalusian Institute for Earth System Research, at the University of Granada (Spain).

More infornation on the position, requirements and how to apply can be found in the offcial job offer.

A new position for "Researcher and Scientific Project Manager" is opened by the Doing it Together science (DITOs) project, running under the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) within the H2020 framework, and led by the UCL London.

The DITOs project aims to elevate public engagement with science across Europe from passive engagement with the process of developing science to an active one.

Deadline: 23.05.2016

For more information on how to apply and requirements for this position, please download the Official Job Offer.

The EU BON workshop "Biodiversity research for and by citizens in Eastern Europe: tools, information services and public engagement" was organized to present the EU BON citizen science gateway, share accomplishments of the project, promote products, raise and discuss challenges of citizen science and facilitate networking between countries, especially eastern and central European countries.

There were 33 participants from Baltic countries and Finland and EU BON partners from Norway, Spain, Israel and Brussels. First day was showcasing the citizen science initiatives in Estonia, following best practice examples from EU BON consortium. During the second day the participants got a chance to learn the tools and methods for citizen science data management by ECSA and EU BON. This was followed by world cafe style discussion about the needs of citizen science initiatives and Pan-European citizen science gateway. One of the important conclusions for Baltic countries is that there is a need for stronger collaboration and supportive infrastructure to make citizen science more effective and also deliver accessible data to research community.

Some workshop participants also took part of Tartu Mini-BioBlitz on 29th June, first BioBlitz in Estonia. BioBlitz participants observed 239 species of animals, plants and fungi .

.

Workshop agenda

Read a first hand report form the workshop in the two great blog posts by Egle Marija Ramanauskaite (a workshop participant from Lithuania):

http://seplute.tumblr.com/post/146841955105/citsci-overtakes-the-baltics-citizen-science

http://seplute.tumblr.com/post/146844410470/citizen-science-workshop-in-tartu-recap-of-day-2

A new EU BON derived paper, publsihed recently in the journal Remote Sensing, introduces eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas.

Abstract:

Protected areas (PAs) need to be assessed systematically according to biodiversity values and threats in order to support decision-making processes. For this, PAs can be characterized according to their species, ecosystems and threats, but such information is often difficult to access and usually not comparable across regions. There are currently over 200,000 PAs in the world, and assessing these systematically according to their ecological values remains a huge challenge. However, linking remote sensing with ecological modelling can help to overcome some limitations of conservation studies, such as the sampling bias of biodiversity inventories. The aim of this paper is to introduce eHabitat+, a habitat modelling service supporting the European Commission’s Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, and specifically to discuss a component that systematically stratifies PAs into different habitat functional types based on remote sensing data. eHabitat+ uses an optimized procedure of automatic image segmentation based on several environmental variables to identify the main biophysical gradients in each PA. This allows a systematic production of key indicators on PAs that can be compared globally. Results from a few case studies are illustrated to show the benefits and limitations of this open-source tool.

Original Source: 

Martínez-López, J.; Bertzky, B.; Bonet-García, F.J.; Bastin, L.; Dubois, G. Biophysical Characterization of Protected Areas Globally through Optimized Image Segmentation and Classification. Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 780. DOI: 0.3390/rs8090780

A new report has been added to the dedicated EU BON Outputs Collection in the innovative RIO journal. The paper reviews biodiversity related citizen science in Europe, specifically the data mobilization aspect and gives an overview of citizen science related activities in the project EU BON.

In addition, recommendations for a Pan-European citizen science gateway and data mobilization efforts will be given, with the aim of filling in existing biodiversity data gaps. Also the EU BON citizen science gateway is described, which is a part of the European Biodiversity Portal (http://biodiversity.eubon.eu) with citizen science related products. 

Citizen science is a vital element for EU BON with regards to biodiversity information sources that provide data for research and policy-making. CS data are used by many research institutes, public organisations and local data portals. CS data offer volumes of field data, which would otherwise not be possible to collect with the limited resources of research institutes and agencies. Thus one of the main targets for EU BON is to make CS data available through various efforts, for example through networking and by using new technologies for data mobilisation. Overall, one of the main goals of a common EU citizen science Gateway is to integrate CS data for European biodiversity research. EU BON also seeks to develop a strategy for achieving this goal and encourages educational aspects of citizen science through networking and the development of tools.

Original Source:

Runnel V, Wetzel F, Groom Q, Koch W, Pe’er I, Valland N, Panteri E, Kõljalg U (2016) Summary report and strategy recommendations for EU citizen science gateway for biodiversity data. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e11563. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.2.e11563

Europe’s regions are facing rising sea levels and more extreme weather, such as more frequent and more intense heatwaves, flooding, droughts and storms due to climate change, according to the latest European Environment Agency report published on 25 Jan 2017. The report assesses the latest trends and projections on climate change and its impacts across Europe and finds that better and more flexible adaptation strategies, policies and measures will be crucial to lessen these impacts.

Find a summary of the report's Key Findings, or download the full report.

The discipline of taxonomy is highly reliant on previously published photographs, drawings and other images as biodiversity data. Inspired by the uncertainty among taxonomists, a team, representing both taxonomists and experts in rights and copyright law, has traced the role and relevance of copyright when it comes to images with scientific value. Their discussion and conclusions are published in the latest paper added in the EU BON Collection in the open science journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO).

Taxonomic papers, by definition, cite a large number of previous publications, for instance, when comparing a new species to closely related ones that have already been described. Often it is necessary to use images to demonstrate characteristic traits and morphological differences or similarities. In this role, the images are best seen as biodiversity data rather than artwork. According to the authors, this puts them outside the scope, purposes and principles of Copyright. Moreover, such images are most useful when they are presented in a standardized fashion, and lack the artistic creativity that would otherwise make them 'copyrightable works'.

"It follows that most images found in taxonomic literature can be re-used for research or many other purposes without seeking permission, regardless of any copyright declaration," says Prof. David J. Patterson, affiliated with both Plazi and the University of Sydney.

Nonetheless, the authors point out that, "in observance of ethical and scholarly standards, re-users are expected to cite the author and original source of any image that they use." Such practice is "demanded by the conventions of scholarship, not by legal obligation," they add.

However, the authors underline that there are actual copyrightable visuals, which might also make their way to a scientific paper. These include wildlife photographs, drawings and artwork produced in a distinctive individual form and intended for other than comparative purposes, as well as collections of images, qualifiable as databases in the sense of the European Protection of Databases directive.

In their paper, the scientists also provide an updated version of the Blue List, originally compiled in 2014 and comprising the copyright exemptions applicable to taxonomic works. In their Extended Blue List, the authors expand the list to include five extra items relating specifically to images.

"Egloff, Agosti, et al. make the compelling argument that taxonomic images, as highly standardized 'references for identification of known biodiversity,' by necessity, lack sufficient creativity to qualify for copyright. Their contention that 'parameters of lighting, optical and specimen orientation' in biological imaging must be consistent for comparative purposes underscores the relevance of the merger doctrine for photographic works created specifically as scientific data," comments on the publication Ms. Gail Clement, Head of Research Services at the Caltech Library.

"In these cases, the idea and expression are the same and the creator exercises no discretion in complying with an established convention. This paper is an important contribution to the literature on property interests in scientific research data - an essential framing question for legal interoperability of research data," she adds.

###

Original source:

Egloff W, Agosti D, Kishor P, Patterson D, Miller J (2017) Copyright and the Use of Images as Biodiversity Data. Research Ideas and Outcomes 3: e12502. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e12502

Coming to an end, after 4.5 years of hard work and dedicated research, the FP7-funded project EU BON leaves behind a basket of results to support the Group of Earth Observations (GEO) and assist researchers in their future studies.

The EU BON website will continue to exist and host relevant information for at least the next 5 years to ensure project results are easy to access and reuse, not only by EU BON researchers, but for anyone interested in the project or working in the field.

Among the major outcomes of the project, the biodiversity portal is now complete and will be hosted for the next years by CSIC. All EU BON’s tools, products, services and the Citizen Science gateway can be found there.

Additionally, about 15 of our tools will soon be included in the GEO BON’s BON-in-a-Box to ensure sustainability and exploitation of results.

All EU BON related publications are available via the project’s website. Moreover,  important documents are also in a dedicated piloting RIO Open Science collection, demonstrating how next-generation publishing can ensure sustainability of results coming from along the research cycle, including data, guidelines, infographics and more.

EU BON’s success could not be possible without the professional and friendly team of consortium partners and 33 associated partners, who’ve worked hard together and have contributed in various ways and with different efforts.

Credit: Dirk Schmeller

Biodiversity data are sparse, biased and collected at many resolutions. So techniques are needed to combine these data and provide some clarity. This is where downscaling comes in. Downscaling predicts the occupancy of a species in a given area. That is, the number of grid squares a species is predicted to occupy in a standard grid of equally sized squares. Downscaling uses the intrinsic patterns in the spatial organization of an organism’s distributions to predict what the occupancy would be, given the occupancy at a coarser resolution.

Groom et al. (2018) tests different downscaling models on birds and plants in four countries and in different landscapes and shows which models work best. The results show that all models work similarly, irrespective of the type of organism and landscape. However, some models were biased, either under- or overestimating occupancy. However, a few models were both reliable and unbiased. This means we can automate calculation of species occupancy. Workflows can harvest data from many sources and calculate species metrics in a timely manner, potentially delivering warnings so that interventions can be made.

Species invasions, habitat degradation and mass extinctions are not a future threat, they are happening now. Understanding how we should react, and what policies we need should be underpinned by solid evidence. Imagine if we had systems where we could monitor biodiversity just like we monitor the climate in easy to understand numbers that are both accurate and sensitive to change.

The second joint meeting BioSyst.EU 2013, is organized by NOBIS Austria and will take place in Vienna from February 18–22, 2013. The conference is hosted by the University of Vienna and the Natural History Museum Vienna. Within its frame the annual meetings of GfBS and NOBIS Austria will be held.
BioSyst.EU aims to provide a European platform to:
- hold joint meetings on a regular basis;
- promote research, teaching, and training in all areas of systematic biology, including phylogenetic, taxonomic, and biodiversity research;
- encourage collaboration and interchange among researchers, both individually and through their respective societies and institutions;
- coordinate national and international efforts without infringing on the autonomy of the member societies;
- encourage formation of additional national systematic societies, while continuing to represent systematists in countries still lacking formal societies;
- increase the profile and funding of systematic biology in the European parliamen.

Further Information: http://biosysteu.univie.ac.at/

The Research Infrastructures Unit of DG RTD and the infrastructure project LifeWatch invites you to a 1 and ½ day workshop : "Towards a Roadmap for Research Infrastructures on Biodiversity and Ecosystem research in Europe". The workshop will take place Brussels on 19 and 20 March 2013.
The overall objective of this workshop is to develop synergies between ESFRI research infrastructures (RI), existing research infrastructures implemented as Integrating Activities (IA), Integrated Projects (IP) and Joint Programming Initiatives (JPI) which are relevant to Biodiversity and Ecosystem research.
The following topics will be discussed:
1. Synergy between the biodiversity components of different initiatives, also in view of the supporting role of the European research infrastructures in this area.
2. A strategy for the development of biodiversity research infrastructures in the next ten years in view of emerging scientific and technical challenges.

Further information: EuroMarine

iMarine e-Infrastructure for data driven decision making and research
iMarine  is organising an invitation-only workshop to discuss data driven decision making and research on 14th & 15th May 2013 at DG Connect, Avenue de Beaulieu 33 (BU33), Room 0/54, Brussels, Belgium.
The goal of iMarine is to facilitate policy makers in addressing the global challenges impacting on the marine ecosystem, the fisheries sector, local economies and communities and to demonstrate that science based policy making can benefit from a large and distributed e-Infrastructure for cross-disciplinary data collection, harmonization and analysis necessary for the management and conservation of marine living resources.

The ESWC 2013 takes place from May 26th, 2013 to May 30th, 2013 in Montpellier, France.
The ESWC is a major venue for discussing the latest scientific results and technology innovations around semantic technologies. Building on its past success, ESWC is seeking to broaden its focus to span other relevant research areas in which Web semantics plays an important role.
Event web site: ESWC 2013

The first EU BON Informatics Workshop will take place in Trondheim, Norway from 29 to 31 May 2013. The event aims at discussing the data standards and informatics architecture that will be followed by the EU BON project. The workshop will also focus on highlighting linkages to GEOSS Common Infrastructure and the GEO BON. Among the agenda on the list are also presentation of the plans and operations of the EU BON Helpdesk as well as the first assembly of the global Informatics Task Force of EU BON. The workshop is by invitation only. The agenda and travel details have been updated on 2 May 2013, see the below attachment.

The iEvoBio Meeting, 2013, will take place in Snowbird, Utah between June 25-26, in conjunction with Evolution 2013. It aims to bring together biologists working in evolution, systematics and biodiversity, with software developers, and mathematicians.
The keynote speakers for iEvoBio 2013 will be Dr. Heather Piwowar and Dr. Holly Bik.
Submissions for participation in the conference are now open. There are three ways to participate:
- Lightning Talk: present for 5 min on a method, idea, or software product about bioinformatics.
- Software Bazaar: Demo your open-source software product.
- Birds of a Feather: Suggest or participate in an informal group of folks with a common interest. Suggestions will be considered both before and during the meeting.

Find out the whole Program here.
More details about registration can be found here.

Biodiversity Informatics Horizons 2013 (BIH2013) is part of a continuing process that helps to structure and organise the biodiversity informatics community at the European level and beyond. BIH2013 will take place over 3 full days, from lunchtime on Tuesday 3rd September to lunchtime Friday 6th. The venue will be in Rome but is still awaiting final confirmation.

To respond to the challenges and priorities of the next decade in biodiversity and ecosystems research, structuring bottom-up and top-down interactions on informatics and cooperating across the community is now an essential activity. Cooperation avoids unnecessary duplication of activity. It helps to maximise and focus effort on building the information resources, tools and infrastructure the scientists and policymakers need. We all know the importance of this as we face environmental, societal and human health challenges on global scale. Science in support of policy to mitigate biodiversity loss due to climate and other man-made changes, to assure food security, and to combat invasive species (to give just a few examples) can only be achieved by full integration of the biodiversity research community through a commonly-shared, sustainable e-infrastructure across all sub-disciplines that reliably serves science and society alike. Hence, the need to coordinate.

Invited speakers will review challenging areas and promising technologies in biodiversity informatics, pathways to sustainable implementation and changing the community culture. A panel discussion with experts from regions of the world beyond Europe will explore opportunities for international cooperation that lead towards a sustainable global infrastructure. Demonstration and training activities, provided by some of the FP7 projects associated with the conference will allow delegates to see first-hand some of the new and exciting infrastructure building blocks that will come together to deliver the LifeWatch vision.

To read more and register for the conference, please click here.

For early registration conference fee, please register before 31 July.

In 2013, the University of Potsdam will host the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The meeting (www.gfoe-2013.de) will take place from September 9 to 13, 2013 in Potsdam, Germany.

The guiding theme of the 43rd Annual Meeting is "Building bridges in ecology - linking systems, scales and disciplines".
Along the lines of this guiding theme, we will stimulate scientific discussions about all aspects in basic and applied ecological research contributing to better connect.

Continuing the successful mission of previous MTSR Conferences (MTSR'05, MTSR'07, MTSR'09, MTSR'10, MTSR'11 and MTSR’12), the seventh International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR'13) aims to bring together scholars and practitioners that share a common interest in the interdisciplinary field of metadata, linked data and ontologies. Participants will share novel knowledge and best practice in the implementation of these semantic technologies across diverse types of Information Environments and applications. These include Cultural Informatics; Open Access Repositories & Digital Libraries; E-learning applications; Search Engine Optimisation & Information Retrieval; Research Information Systems and Infrastructures; e-Science and e-Social Science applications; Agriculture, Food and Environment; Bio-Health & Medical Information Systems. 

The course is a two-day hands-on training event. The course will accommodate 10-15 researchers. The program consists of introductory lectures, practical computer work, and discussions. Researchers will be contacted upon admission in order to consider their own research objectives for the course. more ...

Integrating mechanisms into macroecology 

8^th Annual Meeting of the Specialist Group for Macroecology of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (GfÖ)

Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Institute of Biology, Department Geobotany & Botanical Garden, Am Kirchtor 1, 06108 Halle (Saale), Germany

Linking processes and mechanistic approaches (e.g., from physiology, experimental ecology, demography, and evolution) with macroecological approaches, scales, and methods has long been discussed among macroecologists. Still, only few steps toward implementing such links have been taken, yet. With the 8th Annual Meeting of the Specialist Group for Macroecology of the GfÖ, we want to offer a forum for presenting and discussing both tested approaches and new ideas to make these links. Additionally, in order to move beyond discussion, we invite all participants to join the conference workshop on the 2nd day. Here, we plan to intensively discuss gaps in existing approaches and possible ways for bridging these gaps in several discussion groups and to take first steps towards publishing the summarized workshop results. 

http://www.macroecology.org/

A key goal of the iMarine initiative is to support stakeholders in a sustainable use of the marine ecosystem. 

On 7th March 2014, iMarine is organizing an interactive workshop "iMarine data platform for collaborations" to showcase how its powerful data infrastructure is capable of addressing the challenges of the Ecosystem Approach. 

The workshop also offers important opportunities to work together on developing plans related to iMarine sustainability, such as the public partnership model concept, as well as engage new potential users and partners for the future. 

The workshop is co-located with the Fishery Dependent Information conference and will take place at Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) headquarters, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy. 

Participation is free of charge but subject to registration. 

The Integrated Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) Project will convene an Open Science Conference from 23-27 June 2014 in Bergen, Norway, with the goals of:

• highlighting research results from the IMBER project and activities,
• promoting integrated syntheses of IMBER-relevant research, and
• developing a new global research agenda for marine biogeochemistry and ecosystems in the Anthropocene.

The list of contributed sessions and workshops is available here.

The Call for Abstracts is open!  Deadline for abstract submission: 31 January 2014. Contributions are welcome from all marine research communities.

• Meet and get to know fellow projects working on similar topics of relevance to ASEAN
• Discuss results and synergies, exchange on methodologies, plan for joint events, applications, publications, etc. or simply see what's going on in the other region in this topic.
• Plan concrete next joint steps with projects in the cluster.
• Benefit from SUSTAIN EU-ASEAN support (e.g. in your dissemination, exploitation and development activities) and inputs (on the funding environment)
• Share your views on thematic gaps in current research - SUSTAIN is mandated to carry the message to the European Commission

Distributed European School of Taxonomy (DEST) is organizing a course in Philosophy of Biological Systematics targeted at MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers,  professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics. The course has a duration of one week and will take place between 8-12 September 2014.

Deadline for registration: 16 June 2014, extended until Friday 20 June 2014. To register and to learn more about the course visit the official webpage: http://www.taxonomytraining.eu/content/philosophy-biological-systematics

Approaching the subject from the perspective of the philosophical foundations of scientific inquiry, this course offers critical examinations of the principles required to judge the scientific merits of systematic/taxonomic procedures by way of the following topics:

• The goal of science
• The goal of biological systematics
• Causal relationships in systematics
• The nature of why-questions
• Three forms of reasoning: deduction, induction, abduction
• The uses of deduction, induction, and abduction in science
• Evidence and reasoning
• Fact, theory & hypothesis
• Theory & hypothesis testing
• Systematics involves abductive reasoning
• Inferences of systematics hypotheses, i.e. taxa
• Implications for ‘phylogenetic’ methods
• Causal explanations, not ‘trees’ or cladograms
• Parsimony, likelihood, Bayesianism: are they relevant to abductive reasoning, thus phylogenetic inference?
• The requirement of total evidence
• The errors of cladogram comparisons & character mapping
• Homology, homogeny & homoplasy
• Character coding
• Mechanics of hypothesis testing: implications for cladograms
• Character data cannot test phylogenetic hypotheses
• The nature evidential support
• The proper testing of phylogenetic hypotheses
• The myths of bootstrap, jack-knife & Bremer ‘support’
• Implications for nomenclature
• Defining biodiversity and conservation

Participants will be provided reprints covering the topics in the course, as well as a PDF file with all course slides (>800) and associated notes.

Place and date: Joensuu, Finland, 17-20 March 2015

Purpose of this meeting is to launch several EU BON products, give a related training workshop, work on upcoming deliverables, and gain synergies by working with CETAF. Registration for the workshop is now open, see below!

More nformation is available here: http://digitarium.fi/en/content/eu-bon-and-cetaf-joint-informatics-workshop

An GEO BON - EU BON workshop iis scheduled for 20-24 July in Manaus, Brasil for a targeted group of representatives of the different EU BON WPs or task forces.

The workshop will specifically target the following:

– Issues of designing and running biodiversity monitoring observatories (i.e. optimization and guidelines for planning biodiversity monitoring)

– Analyses of biodiversity data to be addressed for assessing changes and patterns

– Linkage of (meta-) data to EU BON portal

Being hosted in Manaus, this workshop will facilitate the integration of Brazilian and European expertise, for instance by updating about the progress made by Brazil in starting participatory resource monitoring in Brazilian National parks and the development of databases to integrate this information. The workshop will be held at the Federal University of Amazonas Experimental Site.

The official Governing Board meeting, including the GBIF symposium, will take place on 8-10 October in Antananarivo, Madagascar. Prior to that there will be Training sessions for Nodes on 4-5 October, followed by the Global Nodes Meeting on 6-7 October. Committee meetings will take place on 6 October.

A special symposium will be hosted on 7 October where all delegates are invited to attend. After the Governing Board meeting, on 11 October, there is a possibility to visit the Andasibe National Park.  

The Europena Conference "Nature-based Solutions to Climate Change  in Urban Areas and their Rural Surroundings: Linkages between science, policy and practice" will take place from 17 to 19 November 2015 in Bonn, Germany.

The event is a joint European Conference held by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) and the European Network of Heads of Nature Conservation Agencies (ENCA) in co-operation with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) / German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv).

Climate change has significant impact on society and biodiversity in Europe. Urban inhabitants are most likely to experience climate change effects directly because currently 73 per cent of Europeans live in urban areas. Here, management of urban ecosystems offer sustainable and cost-effective solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation while contributing to human well-being.

This European conference will bring together experts from science, policy and practice to highlight and debate the importance of nature-based solutions to climate change in urban areas and their rural surroundings. Emphasize is given to the potential of nature-based approaches to create multiple-benefits.

The conference is divided into three main areas (day 1: science, day 2: practice and implementation, day 3: policy and business), each of which will be opened by keynote speakers including:

• Hans Bruyninckx (Executive Director European Environmental Agency, EEA)
• Wilhelm Krull (Chair of the H2020 expert group on nature-based solutions and re-naturing cities, Secretary General Volkswagen Foundation)
• Georgina Mace (University College London – UCL, Director of Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research)
• Christine Wamsler (Lund University, Centre for Sustainability Studies)
• Nataša Jazbinšek (Head of Department for Environmental Protection City of Ljubljana and Head of working group for European Green Capital programme 2016)
• Wolfgang Teubner (ICLEI Regional Director for Europe)
• Kurt Vandenberghe (Director for Climate action and resource efficiency at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation)
• Chantal van Ham (IUCN – EU Programme Manager Nature Based Solutions)
• Dirk Sijmons (Delft University of Technology)

Keynote speeches are complemented by plenary presentations given by leading experts in the fields of urban biodiversity, climate change, and socio-economic effects of nature-based solutions, interactive sessions and a poster exhibition.

Deadline for abstract submission is 24 July 2015 (abstract submission guidelines)

Registration:

Early bird registration deadline: 18 September 2015

Final registration deadline: 30 October 2015

For more information and to register please visit: http://www.ecbcc2015.com/

The UNFCCC Climate Summit will take place between 30 November and 11 December 2015 in Paris, France.

The event will include: UNFCCC COP 21/ CMP 11 - Twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and the eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol

More information will be available closer to the dates at: http://unfccc.int/meetings/unfccc_calendar/items/2655.php

The "International Workshop Decision Models and Population Management" will take place from 2 to 4 February, 2014 in Paris, France. The three days international and interdisciplinary workshop is devoted to the decision making, in particular in presence of multiple actors with or without interaction. These problems occur in a natural way in management of populations, where the dynamics are strongly related to the decisions. The workshop aims to bring together Mathematicians, Computer Scientists and Ecologists around the problem of populations management. The population dynamics, viability theory and game theory form an umbrella of helpful mathematical tools in this context. On the other hand, the computer sciences bring the online and algorithmic mechanism design.

The workshop is motivated by concrete problems proposed by ecologists and aims to create a synergy between scientists from different backgrounds to address the challenging modelling of decision making in the context of ecological paradigms.

Invited Speakers
- Michel BENAIM (Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Swtizerland)
- Renato CASAGRANDI (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
- Denis COUVET (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France)
- Sylvain DUCTOR (LIP6, UPMC, Paris, France)
- Marino GATTO (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria-Politecnico di Milano, Italy) 
- Ihab HAIDAR (Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France)
- Sophie MARTIN (UR LISC - IRSTEA)
- Nicolas MAUDET (LIP6, UPMC, Paris, France) 
- Paco MELIÀ (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
- Jean-Baptiste MIHOUB (UPMC-Sorbonne Universités, Paris, France)
- Vianney PERCHET (Université Denis Diderot, Paris, France)
 - Karl SIGMUND (University of Vienna, Wien, Austria)
- Sylvain SORIN (IMJ-PRG, UPMC, Paris, France)
- Jean-Philippe TERREAUX (IRSTEA-ADBX, Bordeaux, France)
- Tristan TOMALA (École des hautes études commerciales de Paris, Paris, France)
- Vladimir VELIOV (Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria)
- Yannick VIOSSAT (Université Paris-Dauphine, Paris, France)

The 54^th International Conference of the Association of German Taxidermists, organised by the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, wiill take place from 5 - 9 April 2016, in Berlin, Germany.

More information: http://www.praeparation.de/aktuelles/54_internationale_arbeitstagung 

From 7 to 9 June 2016 the city of Venice will host an International Conference titled: "Citizen Observatories for Water Management". The Conference will focus on the potential of Citizen Science in the European water innovation landscape, and in particular in the fields of flood risk management, environmental monitoring and meeting the challenges of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

The Conference will be an opportunity for actors in the field of science and innovation to exchange experiences on the development, implementation and use of new technologies to bring water-related issues closer to citizens.

Introduction

Citizen observatories are emerging as a virtual and physical place where citizens and decision makers cooperate to gather and share information to promote innovative and shared solutions. Strategic decisions and policies that impact society and the environment require intensive data collection and interpretation. Such information provides an important basis for long term planning as well as short term response (e.g. to flooding, drought,  pollution events, cyanobacterial blooms).

The COWM 2016 conference will explore the role and opportunities for active citizen participation in environmental monitoring and policy making. The event will provide opportunities to engage with researchers, policy makers and practitioners actively involved in improving our understanding of citizen science initiatives. Participants will discuss the growing potential of Citizens’ Observatories in empowering the society and improving the resilience at the community scale.

The meeting will bring together social scientists, surveyors, engineers, scientists, and other professionals from many countries involved in research and development activities in a wide range of technical and management topics related to citizen observatories and their impacts on society and how to maximize the benefit of data emerging from citizen observatories.

More information available here: http://www.conwater2016.eu/index.php/en/

The conference covers scenarios and modelling applications in marine, freshwater and terrestrial systems, across all relevant disciplines of natural and social sciences. It is open to scientists and experts working in the field, policy makers and practioners. The conference focuses on: (i) Exploring recent advances in modelling human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, (ii) Addressing the use of scenarios and models for decision support, (iii) Mobilising observations of biodiversity and ecosystem services for model development and testing, (iv) Capacity building for developing scenarios and models and for their use in decision making, (v) Horizon scanning and addressing gaps in knowledge.

More information available on the conference website.

The 3rd edition of the DEST course "Philosophy of Biological Systematics" is co-organised with the Scandinavian Research School in Biosystematics (ForBio) and will take place from 10 to 14 October 2016.

Target Audience

MSc students, PhD students, early career researchers, professional systematists/taxonomists and anyone who is interested in the philosophy of Biological Systematics.

Criteria for selection will be scientific merit, motivation and usefulness of the training course for the applicant's career.

For more information and to register, please go to: http://taxonomytraining.eu/content/philosophy-biological-systematics-1

The 10th  International Conference on Ecological Informatics 'Facing Global Change by Sharing Data and Models' wil take place on 24‐28 October 2016 in Dubrovnik, Croatia  

By lending access via the Internet to biodiversity data in open data infrastructures, biodiversity informatics worldwide allows anyone, anywhere to access and analyze data about all types of life on Earth. In applying common standards, research not previously possible is enabled, and better decisions to conserve and sustainably use the biological resources of the planet made possible.

In this symposium an overview of present and future opportunities will be given alongside recent research presentations and demonstrations of up-to-date tools for providing and acquiring information, handling data and presenting results.

The symposium is arranged as an Oikos Satellite Symposium but is open to anyone, i.e. also those not attending the Oikos conference can register for the symposium.

This symposium is organised by Swedish LifeWatch, GBIF Sweden and Department of Ecology at SLU and it will take place on February 6 2017, in Ecology Building, Sölvegatan 37, Lund, Sweden.

For more information, please visit the official event's page: http://www.slu.se/biodiversity-informatics

A crowd lined up for a screening at the 2024 Wisconsin Film Festival (Source: Wisconsin Film Festival Facebook) KT here: About a month ago, August 17 to be precise, Variety published an essay by Owen Gleiberman. In it he decries the fact that while national grosses of mainstream films, especially blockbusters, have been recovering from […]