GBits

no. 25 Nov 2011

SCIENCE AND POLICY � � � � � � 2
Use of GBIF helps clarify environment-species links

free and open access to biodiversity data

Data publishing in Pensoft journals integrated with
the Dryad Data Repository

Action plan for
information on invasive
alien species

GBIF-enabled data used to study potential spreadof bullfrog in S. America

Government experts meeting under the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) have endorsed a wide-ranging
programme to strengthen information available todecision-makers on the spread of invasive alien species(IAS).
The plan, presented to the CBD’s Subsidiary Body on
Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA)
in Montreal, arose from a workshop held at the GBIF
Secretariat in Copenhagen in September.
The joint work programme (JWP, see UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/15/INF/14 at http://www.cbd.int/
doc/?meeting=sbstta-15) unites eight information
service providers behind nearly 50 action points aimed at
combining and harmonizing data on IAS from a wide rangeof different databases and networks.

Data accessed through GBIF used to model spreadof coffee pest in East Africa

GB18 AND SCIENCESYMPOSIUM� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 2
Training course on biodiversity data publishing
New Executive Secretary announced
Danish scientist awarded €30,000 Ebbe NielsenPrize

INFORMATICS � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3
GBIF Data Portal upgrades now live
International collaboration for sharing ofbiodiversity data

GBIF COMMUNITY � � � � � � � � � � 4Australia’s Volunteer Portal is open for business
GBIF training manual available in French
Welcome box for Nodes launched

DATA PUBLISHING NEWS � � � 4
New publishersOther datasets

UPCOMING EVENTS � � � � � � � � 5
Courses on biodiversity data and information
management in East Africa

Water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes

The specific activities to be led by GBIF in the JWP include:• Incorporating information on invasive alien species
in the fields available to data publishers using Darwin
Core Archive (DwC);• Promoting the use of the GBIF Integrated Publishing
Toolkit (IPT) to publish data for IAS;• ‘Tagging’ species in the GBIF Data Portal to make iteasier to extract country lists of invasive alien species,and making the millions of existing records on IAS
available to other information systems;• Promoting the use of the Global Names Architecture –the infrastructure developed by GBIF to help identify
names used in various taxonomic references and/or
checklists;• Helping identify gaps in data on IAS and developing
strategies to mobilize them.
Read more…

Biodiversity data analysis and use workshop by
GBIF France
Training course on persistent identifiers
VertNet biodiversity informatics training workshop

GBitsSCIENCE AND POLICY
Use of GBIF helps clarify environmentspecies linksAnalysis of a massive set of mammal data accessed
through the GBIF Data Portal has helped quantify theinfluence of various environmental factors on which
species are present in a particular area.
A team of Israeli scientists based at the Technion
Institute, Haifa, used all available mammal occurrence
records with detailed coordinates in the lower 48
states of the continental United States.
Some 308,000 records of 284 species, from 70
datasets published through the GBIF network to
global standards, were mapped against a number ofenvironmental variables at ten spatial scales, rangingin resolution from 20 sq km to 10,000 sq km ‘grain’size, and from 20,000 sq km to 10m sq km in extent.
Lead author Rafi Kent says, “The study would not be
possible if we did not have such free access to thedata as provided by the GBIF portal.”
The results, published in PLoS One, suggest that at
the larger scale and coarser resolution, climate is thebiggest factor influencing the composition of mammal
species communities, while land use and land cover(human uses and natural vegetation types) become
increasingly important at smaller scales and higherresolution.
Read more...

Data publishing in Pensoft journals
integrated with the Dryad Data
Repository

Following the partnership between GBIF and Pensoft
publishing on citable Data Papers, the data publishing
workflow of eight journals published by Pensoft
has now been integrated with the Dryad Digital
Repository, facilitating data archiving.
Read more...

GBIF-enabled data used to study
potential spread of bullfrog in S. America
A study using GBIF-enabled data confirms thevulnerability of the Atlantic Forest biodiversity
hotspot to invasive American bullfrog, and warnsof future suitability of Andean-Patagonian forest,eastern Paraguay, and northwestern Bolivia tobullfrog invasion.
Read more...

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Data accessed through GBIF used tomodel spread of coffee pest in East Africa
The coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei), a
beetle native to Africa, is one of the most harmful
pests to coffee crops worldwide. Rising temperaturesin East Africa have benefited the insect, whose
distribution range has expanded. A recent study
uses GBIF-enabled data in the mapping of future
distributions of H. hampei in coffee producing areasof the region.
Read more...

GB18 AND SCIENCESYMPOSIUM
The 18th meeting of the Governing Board (GB18)
and associated events were held in Buenos Aires,Argentina, from 28 September to 7 October.
Participants at the board meeting, held on 4 and 6October, included representatives from 30 countries,
12 international organizations and observers.
Meetings of the advisory committees, training
sessions for the nodes and the GBIF annual science
symposium also took place in the city.

Training course on biodiversity data
publishing

A three-day training course for nodes was held from28 to 30 September as an associated event of GB18.
The workshop provided node managers information
on new biodiversity data publishing options, building
data discovery and publishing strategies and on data
quality and fitness for use.
The course, held in parallel sessions in English,
French and Spanish, attracted 43 participants from36 countries and organizations. In their evaluationof the sessions, node managers said that there wasparticular interest in the sessions on the handling of
metadata and the use of the Darwin Core Archive
format. Having the sessions and resources in different
languages also received positive feedback.

New Executive Secretary announced
The GBIF Governing Board approved the appointmentof Donald Hobern as its new Executive Secretary.
Currently the director of the Atlas of Living Australia(ALA), Hobern will take up the post at the end ofJanuary 2012. He will arrive at the Copenhagenbased Secretariat as GBIF starts to implement its
new strategic plan for 2012-16, aimed at advancing
the data content, informatics and engagement of its
worldwide network.

Aug 2011

In addition to the appointment of Donald Hobern, theGoverning Board approved the GBIF work programmefor 2012-13 and a revised budget for 2012, and reelected Joanne Daly as the Chair of GBIF.

no 25 Nov 2011

out inaccurate or incorrect locations and names forspecies occurrences; and enabling species checklists
to be indexed as datasets accessible through theportal.

Read more…

Danish scientist awarded €30,000 Ebbe
Nielsen Prize
Among the events associated with GB18 was anaward ceremony for Jens-Christian Svenning,professor of ecoinformatics and biodiversity at
Aarhus University, Denmark, who was selected as the2011 winner of the Ebbe Nielsen Prize. This prize isawarded annually by GBIF to recognize novel use ofbiosystematics and biodiversity informatics.
The prize was awarded in recognition of Svenning’s
work in the field of macroecology, which deals
with the relationship between organisms and theirenvironment at a large scale, to describe patterns ofabundance, distribution and diversity.
Jens Svenning also presented his work at the 2011
GBIF Science Symposium, GBIF at 10: Reaping
Benefits for Science and Society, which was organizedon 5 October in Buenos Aires as an associated eventof GB18. Other presentations at the symposium
highlighted GBIF’s work and impact in its first decade,from the point of view of eight national and thematic
Participant nodes.
Read more…
The science symposium presentations can bedownloaded at http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/gbif-symposia-and-workshops/gbifannual-science-symposium/#c2118
A summary of the symposium can be read at http://www.iisd.ca/ymb/gbif/sc2011/brief/brief_gbif_
sc2011.html

INFORMATICSGBIF Data Portal upgrades now live
A major upgrade to enhance the quality and usabilityof data accessible through the GBIF Data Portal has
gone live.
The enhancements are the result of a year’s work by
developers at the GBIF Secretariat, in collaboration
with colleagues throughout the worldwide network.

US records on the GBIF Data Portal after data clean-up

After a testing period, the changes now apply tothe more than 312 million biodiversity data records
currently indexed from some 8,500 datasets and 340
publishers worldwide.
Read more…

International collaboration for sharing ofbiodiversity data
GBIF and the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) havedeveloped a new technical collaboration aimed atpromoting efficient sharing of biodiversity data forscience and society.
EOL, a GBIF Associate Participant, is now able to‘harvest’ information from content partners using
data standards compatible with, and derived from,the Darwin Core Archive (DwC) used by GBIF.
The collaboration aims to enable institutions to
use a single publication process to make their data
accessible through both platforms, simultaneously
reaching a wide spectrum of users from scientists anddecision-makers to students and the general public.
As reported in the last issue of GBits, the new versionof EOL, launched in August, also includes recentlyupdated maps via the Map tab found on each EOLtaxon page (see http://eol.org/pages/1045608/maps
for an example) displaying the locations of species
occurrences published to the GBIF network andaccessible through the GBIF Data Portal. These maps
will be updated automatically every time data in theGBIF index is refreshed.
Read more…

They respond to a range of issues including the needfor quicker ‘turnaround’ time between entering new
data and their appearance on the portal; filtering
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GBits
GBIF COMMUNITY
Australia’s Volunteer Portal is open forbusiness
The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), in partnershipwith the Australian Museum (AM), has developed anonline volunteer portal for members of the public tohelp capture non-digital information (e.g. typed orhandwritten) that describes collection material within
Australian museums.

allows them to move through the ranks based on thenumber of labels or diary pages they transcribe.

GBIF training manual available in French
The six booklets that form the first GBIF training
manual Digitization of Natural History Collections are
now available in French.
The manual covers topics such as starting adigitization project, biodiversity data quality andcleaning, including geo-referencing, dealing withsensitive data and various uses of biodiversity data.
The manual is the result of joint efforts of GBIF,
the Belgian Development Cooperation (DGD), theRoyal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren,
Belgium and GBIF France.
The booklets can be accessed through the GBIF Online
Resource Centre.

The aim of the project is to encourage volunteers towork on transcribing specimen labels, field notes andexpedition diaries from various Australian museums,
turning them into digitized records. So far, several
hundred volunteers have joined the programme andaround 7,000 individual tasks have been completed.
ALA says there is still much to do, and welcomes newvolunteers. Interested people may sign up at http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Currently three projects are on offer from theAustralian Museum.
The first two projects concern transcribing labels
associated with images of physical specimens of
cicadas and Hawk Moths into digitized records. Datasuch as the collector, date, location, and identification
are transcribed into their component fields. A teamof validators checks and if necessary alters thesubmitted records, which are then available to update
digital specimen databases using standard Darwin
Core metadata format.
The third project is to transcribe images ofhandwritten entomological field expedition diariesof the Scott sisters who, during the 1930s, collected
insects and painted beautiful illustrations ofspecimens.
Other projects soon to be released are labeltranscription of leafhoppers for the AustralianMuseum, and a collection of cicadas from CSIRO’s
Australian National Insect Collection.
Each of these projects tries to liken the experience
to being out in the field with the specimen collectorsof the past. A scoreboard logs volunteer efforts and44Welcome box for Nodes launched
The GBIF Nodes Welcome Box v.1.0 (WBox) waslaunched at the global meeting of nodes held inBuenos Aires in conjunction with the GBIF Governing
Board meeting.
The WBox provides new node managers and theirteams materials designed to provide an introduction
to GBIF and to establishing a Biodiversity Information
Facility (BIF). The material is available through theGBIF Online Resource Centre (www.gbif.org/orc).
Requests for a WBox CD may be sent to wbox@gbif.
org, and feedback on this first version is welcome.

DATA PUBLISHING NEWSNew publishers
The Institute of Traditional Medicine at the Muhimbili
University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania
has published 4021 records from its herbarium
collections. These include mostly medicinal plant
species recorded by local healers in various partsof the country. The institute researches traditional
healing systems in Tanzania, and identifies materials
which can be developed into drugs. (http://data.gbif.
org/datasets/resource/13540)
Ecocean USA, a non-profit organization, has publishedrecords from its Manta Matcher library, the firstglobal manta ray database. The published records linkto photos of individual mantas sighted. These photos
show patterns and markings, which help identify
individuals and help keep track of the population.
(http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/13529)

Aug 2011

Other datasets

The 7.4 million records submitted by Birds Australia,
an organization that works for the conservation ofAustralia’s native birds, have been indexed and areavailable through the GBIF Data Portal. (http://data.
gbif.org/datasets/resource/13030/)
The Natural History Museum of Denmark has
published 9585 records of Tanzanian bird material.
The Zoological Museum, which is part of thenatural history museum, has one of the largest bird
collections from Tanzania. The records cover 18orders, 64 families, 283 genera and 621 species. The
dataset includes 1475 image links. (http://data.gbif.
org/datasets/resource/13546)
The Slovakian Institute of Botany has published overa 100,000 records of plants from herbaria in thecountry, relating both to native flora and plants that
occur outside Slovakia. (http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/13502).

no 25 Nov 2011

Biodiversity data analysis and useworkshop by GBIF France

Paris, France, January-February 2012
This workshop gives researchers, publishers, andothers in charge of organizing biodiversity information
networks an overview of the different ways to access
GBIF-mediated data as well as various possible uses ofsuch data.
Read more...

Training course on persistent identifiers
Madrid, Spain, 8-10 February 2012
The workshop aims at increasing the knowledgeof teams leading the development of biodiversity
informatics tools on persistent identifiers. The training
looks specifically at issuing, using, publishing andresolving identifiers.
Read more...

UPCOMING EVENTS

VertNet biodiversity informatics training
workshop

Courses on biodiversity data andinformation management in East Africa

Boulder, Colorado, U.S., 24-30 June 2012
VertNet invites applications for its first biodiversity
informatics workshop, which will provide participants
with the training to work with primary biodiversity
data sources. The course is open to undergraduates,
recent post baccalaureates and early-career graduate
students.

Kigali, Rwanda, 4-6 December 2011 and DecemberJanuary 2012
ARCOS (the Albertine Rift Conservation Society)is organizing two workshops as part of its project
to build competence for biodiversity information
systems in the region. The first, to be held from 4-6
December 2011, covers data integration, planning,
design and testing. The second workshop will cover
data verification and validation, standards, datadelivery, data summaries, analyses and reports,
distribution mechanism and feedback. Both courses
are open to participants from Burundi, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

Application materials are available at http://vertnet.
org/about/BITW.php.

Read more...

VISION OF GBIF: A world in which biodiversity
information is freely and universally available forscience, society, and a sustainable future.

MISSION OF GBIF: To be the foremost global resourcefor biodiversity information, and engender smart
solutions for environmental and human well-being.

GBIF Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15
DK-2100 Copenhagen ØDenmark

Tel: +45 35 32 14 70
Fax: +45 35 32 14 80
E-mail: info@gbif.org

http://www.gbif.org/

GBits archive: http://www.gbif.org/communications/
resources/newsletters/
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