GBits

no. 27 Mar 2012SCIENCE AND POLICY � � � � � � 2
GBits Science Supplement

free and open access to biodiversity data

Genomic data in GBIF
moves a step closer
An international technical collaboration has opened up
new possibilities for including genomic-level data in theinformation made freely available through GBIF.
Successful alignment of informatics standards for recording
species occurrences and gene-sequence descriptions has
enabled the first steps to be taken towards integrating thedifferent types of data.
An experimental programme aims to bring data fromseveral repositories of genomic information into the GBIF
network, using adaptations of the Darwin Core (DwC)
standard for sharing biodiversity data.
The mapping of three standards was completed at a GBIFled workshop in Oxford, United Kingdom bringing together
experts from Europe, the United States, China and Japan.

GBIF contributes marine data to D4Science project

DATA PUBLISHING NEWS � � � 2Paraguay plant checklist breaks new ground inpublishing
A seven-step guide to publishing data through
GBIF
GBIF checklist guide available for public review

NEW DATASETS� � � � � � � � � � � � � 2
GBIF COMMUNITY � � � � � � � � 3-4
Results of GBIF regional training call announced
GBIF regional meetings
Taiwanese Encyclopedia of Life to be established
Norway’s species map service upgrade
GBIF partner ARCOS wins award for effective
institutions
Taxonomic and field identification workshops inIreland
GBIF Strategic Plan now available in traditional
ChineseGBIF SECRETARIAT NEWS � � 5
New Executive Secretary starts at GBIFUPCOMING EVENTS � � � � � � � � 5
Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC)
Other events

The workshop, hosted by Oxford University’s e-ResearchCentre, continued the collaboration between GBIF and theGenomics Standards Consortium (GSC), an international
community promoting mechanisms to standardize
descriptions of genomes and the environmental context inwhich they occur.
The developments will fulfill an objective of GBIF’s
Strategic Plan 2012-16, which calls for the network toaccommodate new types of data, in order to give accessto information on the estimated 90 per cent of the world’s
biodiversity still to be discovered – the currency of which
will largely be genomic information.
Read more ...

GBitsSCIENCE AND POLICY
GBits Science SupplementGBits subscribers may wish to know we are offeringa new service to keep you abreast of the increasing
number of scientific studies making use of data
accessed through GBIF. A GBits Science Supplement
will be published alongside each new edition of thisnewsletter.
To find details of 50 research papers using GBIFmediated data, published since the New Year, see thefirst edition of the supplement here. We hope youfind it useful, and would very much appreciate yourfeedback.

GBIF contributes marine data toD4Science project
Biodiversity data accessed through GBIF have beenused in a project to generate high-resolution mapson the distribution of fish species. GBIF was one of
the three sources of information for the D4Scienceproject, with earth observation data contributedby the GENESI – Digital Earth Community and theFisheries Global Information System FIGIS.
The D4Science project was launched by a consortiumof universities, research institutes, companies andthe UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) todevelop an ‘e-infrastructure ecosystem’, enabling theaggregation and sharing of diverse data, computingand software resources.
Read more ...

DATA PUBLISHING NEWSParaguay plant checklist breaks newground in publishing
A checklist of vascular plants of the Department ofÑeembucú, Paraguay consisting of more than 4,100
taxon names, was converted from text into Darwin
Core Archive format and published simultaneously as
both a traditional publication and machine-readable
data.
The process is described in the paper From text tostructured data: Converting a word-processed floristic
checklist into Darwin Core Archive format , publishedin Phytokeys journal.
The checklist was published through the GBIF
Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) and significant
portions of the text of the journal article were usedfor the metadata describing the dataset, which will
become available through the GBIF infrastructure.
22A seven-step guide to publishing data
through GBIFA Canadian network dedicated to unlocking thecountry’s biological collections has published a guideon how to publish biodiversity data to GBIF, using
seven simple steps.
The Canadensys repository uses its own instance of
the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) to enable
several plant, insect and citizen science collections topublish data without installing additional software.
Although the new guide targets Canadian dataowners, it can be adapted for use by other publishers.
The data publishing guide is available at http://www.
canadensys.net/publication/data-publication-guide.

GBIF checklist guide available for publicreview
A new Best practice guide for compiling, maintaining,
disseminating national species checklists, is now
available for public review.
The document is intended to provide guidance on
policy and procedures for accessing and capturing
information for national checklists. Feedback andsuggestions are invited from the community, via
http://community.gbif.org/pg/file/read/22498, by 6
April 2012.

NEW DATASETS
Denmark - The Danish biodiversity information
facility DanBIF published nearly two million
records of vascular plants, recorded under anationwide monitoring programme. The NOVANA
programme, carried out by the Danish Ministry of
the Environment, aims to assess the environmentalpressures, such as sources of pollution, on aquaticand terrestrial environments.
http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/13989
United Kingdom - The UK National Biodiversity
Network has published 19 new datasets totallingnearly 1.3 million records. They include surveys ofwoodland plants and marine data from Wales, as wellas datasets of threatened lichens, otters and bats.
http://data.gbif.org/datasets/provider/172
United States - The Cincinnati Museum Center’sMuseum of Natural History and Science has publishedmore than 1,200 records from its genomic resource
collection for ornithology. The collection consists
mainly of vouchered frozen tissues kept at -80
degrees Celsius, as well as blood samples frombanded birds, isolated genomic DNA and othermaterials for use in molecular genetic and otherbiomolecular studies.
http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/13990

Aug 2011

GBIF COMMUNITY
Results of GBIF regional training callannounced
Four regional training events organized byParticipants will receive funding support in 2012,
following a call for proposals.
Sixteen GBIF Participants will directly benefit fromthese support grants, and they will provide outreach
opportunities to nine countries that are not yet
members of GBIF. The events are:• 2012 Asia-Pacific workshop on sharing
biodiversity information and the Integrated
Publishing Toolkit (IPT2) by TaiBIF.
Taipei City (Chinese Taipei), May 2012.
Partners: ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB),
Chinese Taipei, the International Centre forIntegrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD),India, Pakistan and Republic of Korea.
• Biodiversity information standards and protocols
workshop by UgaBIF.
Kampala (Uganda), July 2012.
Partners: The Albertine Rift Conservation Society(ARCOS), Kenya, Republic of Congo, South Africa,
Tanzania and Uganda.
• Biodiversity data publishing in the Hindu KushHimalayas: platform, prospect and progress byICIMOD.
Kathmandu (Nepal), July 2012.
Partners: Chinese Taipei, ICIMOD, India andPakistan.
• Biological collections 3.0 by GBIF Colombia.
Bogotá (Colombia), October 2012.
Partners: Argentina, Colombia, Spain andUruguay.

no 27 Mar 2012

Vergara from the ACB was elected as Asian regionalrepresentative. A draft outcome of the meeting has
been circulated to the Nodes Steering Group forratification.
The fourth meeting of European nodes was held from27 to 29 March at the Botanic Garden and BotanicalMuseum Berlin-Dahlem and the Museum fürNaturkunde, Berlin. It involved 55 participants from
13 countries and three organizations.

Participants at the European nodes meeting

The European meeting included presentations on:• GBIF Spain’s biodiversity data quality hub;• The reBiND infrastructure to rescue at-riskdatabases, (see the January GBits);• GBIF Germany’s data annotation system AnnoSys;• GBIF UK’s online data capturing system Indicia
and data cleaning tool Record Cleaner.

GBIF regional meetings

The European nodes discussed and agreed on anaction plan to boost collaboration with the BioFresh
Initiative , an EU-funded project to build a global
platform for databases on freshwater biodiversity.
The focus of the regional collaboration will be ademonstration project on mobilizing data, including
checklists, on freshwater invasive species.

Two regional meetings of GBIF national andorganizational nodes took place in March, continuing
the process of collaboration at regional level tosupport access to biodiversity information.

The meeting in Berlin was attended by threeobservers from Italy, which is not currently a GBIF
Participant. The 2013 European nodes meeting will behosted by GBIF Finland.

The second Asian regional nodes meeting washeld in Tokyo on 1 and 2 March. It was organized by
GBIF Japan, and funded by the Japanese ministryof environment. The meeting involved four country
nodes (Korea, Japan, India and Indonesia) and fourother associates (ACB, Chinese Taipei, ICIMOD, World
Federation for Culture Collections - WFCC).

Taiwanese Encyclopedia of Life to beestablished

The Tokyo meeting discussed a preliminary strategy
for developing regional collaboration between Asian
Participants on the scientific use of GBIF-mediateddata, and a regional work programme. Sheila

TaiEOL aims to have species information pages on
16,000 Taiwanese native species, including more than
8,000 endemic species. These pages will include taxon
descriptions and images.

Information related to the call for support is at
http://www.gbif.org/participation/training/plans/regionaltraining/.

The GBIF node for Chinese Taipei, TaiBIF, has received
a three-year government grant to establish a new
Taiwanese database and website for the Encyclopediaof Life (EOL).

33

GBitsPhoto by Colin Kuo-Chang Wen

For further information, contact:
Nils Valland
E-mail: nils.valland@artsdatabanken.noGBIF partner ARCOS wins award for
effective institutions

Oncorhynchus formosanus, an endemic species from Taiwan

The national Chinese Taipei e-Learning and Digital
Archives Program (TELDAP), which aims to promotenational digital archives and e-learning applications
for the development of Chinese Taipei, has alreadyaccumulated a large amount of biodiversity
information from various databases, and this will feed
into TaiEOL. The Forestry Bureau will also provide
information on 4,000 native vascular plants.
In addition, scholars, experts and citizen scientists will
be invited to contribute content to the pages.

Norway’s species map service upgrade
Norway’s map-based species portal (http://artskart.
artsdatabanken.no) has been given a significant
upgrade, including smarter quality control features
and an English interface.
The Artskart portal was set up in 2007 by GBIF
Norway in cooperation with the Norwegianbiodiversity information centre Artsdatabanken. Itis used widely in Norway’s land use planning, roads
administration, water and energy agencies, as well
as by forestry and other industries based on naturalresources. Researchers, consulting firms and schools
also use the facility.
The upgrade allows users to narrow their searches
to include only species occurrences with highgeographical precision; to sort data according tospecies group; and to run statistics showing thenumber of species for which there is georeferenced
information in a limited geographic area, such as amunicipality or county.
The service has also added a new feature thateliminates obvious georeferencing mistakes when
they are uploaded from the source databases, forexample where coordinates lie outside Norway’sborders. In such cases, the records are blocked andreturned to the data owner for correction.
The map service provides access to nearly 13 million
records, with occurrence data for more than 26,000
species, from 30 source institutions and nearly 100
databases. Most of the data are published globally via
the GBIF network.
44The Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS), aGBIF Associate Participant, has won the MacArthurAward for Creative and Effective Institutions,recognizing its achievements in mobilizing partners
for conservation in the region, and in environmental
governance.
The award money will go towards building aheadquarters for ARCOS in Kigali, Rwanda, which will
also act as a regional information and training centre
for NGOs and other institutions. The Albertine Riftregion is a biodiversity hotspot, rich in flora and fauna
and home to three of the world’s great ape species.
ARCOS was one of 15 organizations from six countries
to be recognized by the MacArthur foundation.
A four-day training event organized by ARCOS inDecember helped build expertise in data publishingand geographic information systems (GIS) in theAlbertine Rift region. Twenty-six professionals
from ARCOS’ partner institutions based in Rwanda,Burundi, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congoand Tanzania were trained in the Kigali event.
The information systems manager for ARCOS, Zac
Maritim, led the training, with contributions from theGBIF Secretariat and GBIF nodes in Kenya, Uganda andCameroon. The training was part of a project to builda regional biodiversity portal with partial funding fromthe JRS Biodiversity Foundation.

Taxonomic and field identification
workshops in Ireland
The National Biodiversity Data Centre, whichhosts the GBIF node in Ireland, has announced
its annual programme of taxonomic and fieldidentification workshops. They provide training on
species identification and field survey techniques,building capacity within the recording and researchcommunity in Ireland. The programme of workshops
is run in collaboration with partner organizations
to make use of their existing expertise. The fullprogramme of events is available at the Centre’swebsite.
For further information, contact:
Dr. Liam Lysaght, Director
E-mail: llysaght@biodiversityireland.ieAug 2011

GBIF Strategic Plan now available intraditional Chinese
The GBIF Strategic Plan 2012-2016 has beentranslated into traditional Chinese by the Taiwanesebiodiversity information facility TaiBIF. The document
can be accessed at http://links.gbif.org/sp2012-2016_tc.pdf

GBIF SECRETARIAT NEWSNew Executive Secretary starts at GBIFThe new Executive Secretary of GBIF, Donald Hobern,
has taken up his post and set out his vision for thedirection of the organization in coming years.
Hobern, former director of the Atlas of Living Australia(www.ala.org.au), succeeds Nicholas King as directorof the GBIF Secretariat based in Copenhagen.
Speaking on video (http://vimeo.com/gbif/hobern)no 27 Mar 2012

The conference, to be hosted in Copenhagen
University beside the headquarters of the GBIF
secretariat, will focus on the practical steps needed toprovide the information needs of global commitments
such as the Aichi 2020 targets to halt biodiversity loss.
GBIC will bring together experts in the fields ofbiodiversity informatics, genomics, earth observation,
natural history collections, and biodiversity researchand policy. Attendance at GBIC will be by invitation
only.
The outcome will be published in the form of a Global
Biodiversity Informatics Outlook (GBIO), intended as
the main background document for the e-Biosphere2013 conference that will take place in London on
11-13 March 2013. An advanced draft of GBIO will
be circulated at the IUCN World Congress and CBD
Conference of Parties in September/October 2012.
Read more ...

Donald Hobern says: “GBIF has achieved a great deal
in its first ten years of existence, and anything we do
now is continuing to build on those foundations.”
Among the most exciting aspects, adds Hobern, is theemergence of many of the GBIF national Participantsas leaders in their regions, mobilizing very significant
quantities of biodiversity data and having plans todigitize large amounts of their collections.

Other events

UPCOMING EVENTS

Sixteenth meeting of the CBD’s Subsidiary
Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological
Advice (SBSTTA 16)

Global Biodiversity Informatics
Conference (GBIC)
Copenhagen, Denmark, 2-4 July 2012
Around 100 invited experts from around the world
will gather in Copenhagen in July 2012 for the Global
Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC), to discuss
how informatics can best meet the challenges posedby biodiversity science and policy.

Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity &Ecosystem Services (IPBES), second session ofplenary

Panama City, Panama, 16-21 April 2012
More information ...

Montreal, Canada, 30 April - 4 May 2012
More information ...

Rio+20, United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20-22 June 2012
More information ...

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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