GBits

no. 42 Dec 2014

free and open access to biodiversity data

GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge

GBIF COMMUNITY� � � � � � � � � � � � � � 2
Indo-Norwegian capacity-building
pilot yields new guide on camera
trapping camera
2014 TDWG Conference
COP -12 and GBO-4
EU BON Citizen Science Stakeholder
Roundtable
IOC UNESCO
Updated English, French, Spanish andPortuguese brochures

CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT � � � � � � � 42015 Capacity Enhancement call
Ebbe Nielsen Challenge site

With the aim of inspiring scientists, informaticians, data
modelers, cartographers and other experts to develop
innovative uses of open-access biodiversity data, theSecretariat launched the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge on
2 December.
Named after one of GBIF’s principal founders, whotragically died just before the network came into
being, the Challenge recasts the Ebbe Nielsen Prize as
an incentive competition aimed at encouraging new
advances in biodiversity informatics.
On the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge site, prospective
participants can find complete competition details,
register for updates, find potential collaborators, andpost submissions ahead of the Round One deadline of 2
March 2015.

DATA PUBLISHING � � � � � � � � � � � � � 4
GBIF.org adds ‘data trends’ charts
Decommissioning old GBIF portals

NEW DATA � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 4
BelgiumBrazilChina
Denmark
Germany
Portugal
United States

AROUND THE NETWORK � � � � � � � � 6
GBIF DATA IN USE � � � � � � � � � � � � � 7
EVENTS � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 8

An expert jury will judge the initial entries and selectthree to six finalists to receive €1,000 each while
competing for a €20,000 First Prize later in 2015.
read more
Challenge announcement
GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge

To subscribe to the GBits newsletter, visit
www.gbif.org/newsroom/summary#signup
or email info@gbif.org

GBits
GBIF COMMUNITY
Indo-Norwegian capacity-building
pilot yields new guide on camera
trapping camera Indo-Norwegiancapacity-building pilot yields new
guide on camera trapping camera
A new guide that helps generate data forconservation policy using camera trap images is
one of the major products of a three-year capacitybuilding project involving GBIF and partners in India
and Norway.

presentations, meetings and discussions about
citizen science, Darwin Core, academic community
needs and a proposed biodiversity informatics
training curriculum. During the Conference, GBIF
co-chaired a symposium with EU BON on Standards
for mobilizing and integrating sample-based data,
which featured a presentation by the Secretariat’s
Éamonn Ó Tuama on extending the Darwin Corearchive to support sample data.
read more
Symposium: Standards for mobilizing andintegrating sample-based data
Slides: Publishing sample-based datausing Darwin Core Archives

COP-12 and GBO-4

Photo: courtesy of Wildlife Institute of India

Seeking to demonstrate collaboration on capacitybuilding for the Intergovernmental Platform on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), themultinational team has published a final report thatdetails its outcomes while aiming to break down
barriers to the mobilization and use of biodiversity
data for decision-making.
“We hope this collaborative effort will help
practitioners in many parts of the world workthrough the basic steps needed to generate usefuldata from camera traps”, said the Secretariat’s
Alberto González-Talaván, one of the guide’s
editors.
read moreNews release
Publishing Camera Trap Data: A Best Practice Guide

2014 TDWG Conference
The Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)
2014 conference held from 27-30 October inJönköping, Sweden, focused on biodiversityrelated applications and data standards. Several
staff from the GBIF Secretariat participated in
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The twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties
to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP12), held in Pyeongchang, Republic of Korea, from
6-17 October, agreed a set of decisions collectively
known as the Pyeongchang Roadmap aimed ataccelerating progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity
Targets. It
includedpublication of
the Fourth Global
Biodiversity
Outlook (GBO4)
which concluded
that while
progress had
been madetowards meeting
many of thetargets, in mostcases this was
not sufficient tomeet the goals
set under the
Global Biodiversity Outlook 4
Strategic Plan for
Biodiversity 20112020.
Among the priority actions recommended by
GBO4, and endorsed by governments at COP-12,
was further mobilization of and access to primarybiodiversity data. GBO-4 and the latest updateof the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership singled
out data mobilized through GBIF as an indicatorof progress towards Aichi Target 19 on sharing of
information and knowledge about biodiversity.

Aug 2011

The meeting in Korea also saw the launch of the
Global Invasive Species Information Partnership
Gateway, a collaboration between GBIF and several
partners to bring together information from various
sources to support decision-makers in tackling thethreat posed by invasive species in their countries.

no. 42 Dec 2014

Siro Masinde, the Secretariat’s programme officer
for content mobilization, presented a preliminary
analysis on citizen science contributions to
GBIF-mediated data, which presently accounts
for about one-third of the more than 500 million
occurrences—a percentage that is only expected
to increase in the future. Current sources include
citizen science networks like eBird and iNaturalist,
records from national node Bioblitzes, and crowdsourced digitization efforts like the Australian
Volunteer Portal and les herbonautes.

IOC UNESCO

The GIASIP gateway

read more
Download the Fourth Global Biodiversity
Outlook (GBO4)
Global Invasive Species Information
Partnership Gateway

EU BON Citizen Science Stakeholder
Roundtable
The ‘Citizen Science Stakeholder Roundtable:
How can EU BON support Citizen Science?’ washeld on 27 November in Berlin. The roundtable’s
presentations and discussions focused on theincreasing importance of citizen science as asource of biodiversity data. Attendees maderecommendations to harmonize the quality of data
generated by citizen science, and to encourage
citizen scientists to continue their work and maketheir data available.

A new collaboration between GBIF and theIntergovernmental Oceanographic Commissionof UNESCO (IOC) aims to improve the volume andquality of information available to policy makers forconservation and sustainable use of the ocean’s
biological resources. The two institutions havesigned a Letter of Agreement which recognizes
IOC-UNESCO as a GBIF Affiliate. The focus of theagreement is on improved technical collaboration
between GBIF and the Ocean Biogeographic
Information System (OBIS), an activity underthe IOC’s International Oceanographic Data andInformation Exchange (IODE) programme. The
agreement also recognizes GBIF as an Associate
Data Unit in IODE.
read moreNews release
OBIS website

Updated English, French, Spanish andPortuguese brochures
Secretariat staff have revised
a compact six-panel pamphlet
providing a clear, concise
overview of what GBIF is anddoes in three languages. In
addition to short descriptions of
the various areas of GBIF’s work,
the brochure guides people tolinks for further information.
download
English brochure
French brochure
Spanish brochure

GBIF brochure

Portuguese brochure
Asilidae Latreille. Photo recorded by by Thomas Walsh andpublished by iNaturalist.org in GBIF.org at http://www.gbif.org/
occurrence/1038314930

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GBitsCAPACITY ENHANCEMENT
2015 Capacity Enhancement call
The GBIF Capacity Enhancement Support
Programme provides co-funding to GBIF
Participants for collaborative projects targeting
capacity enhancement and exchange throughmentoring, training and advocacy activities, andthe production or adaptation of documentationand guidance material. Representatives of GBIF
Participants interested in applying for the 2015
Capacity Enhancement call will be invited to submit
short concept notes from 10 February to 3 March2015. Full information about 2015 call will be madeavailable on GBIF.org in the New Year.

DATA PUBLISHING
GBIF.org adds ‘data trends’ charts andricher national information
New visualizations now available on GBIF.org offer
fresh insights into global and national trends indata mobilization and the ways in which national
partners organize their biodiversity information
networks.
These ‘data trends’ charts analyse the volume
and content of the species occurrence information
shared through the GBIF network, both at global
and national levels (as in this example from Japan).
Initially developed through a gap analysis for EU
BON, countries can use the visualizations to trackthe data its institutions publish, to spot data gaps,
and to guide future data publishing and quality
priorities.
Visitors to GBIF.org can also learn more about
GBIF’s national nodes, with the information added
to the Participation section of each country page
(as in this example from Andorra). This enhanced
section explains the history and structure of
the national networks involved in GBIF activity,
describes their respective missions and funding
sources, and shares web and social media links
that enable GBIF.org users to connect directly withthese building blocks of the GBIF community.
read moreNews release44

Decommissioning old data andcommunications portals
The GBIF Secretariat plans to retire its former
websites and associated web services, which arepresently located at http://data.gbif.org and http://
www-old.gbif.org. Pending the imminent release of
a new resource library on GBIF.org, links to the older
resources will be redirected to GBIF.org on or about
31 January 2015.
GBIF community members can help us identify andalert partners still using these services that they
will end on 31 January 2015.
read more
Complete announcement on upcoming
decommissioning

NEW DATABELGIUM
The Belgium Biodiversity Information Facility(BeBIF) has worked with new publisher Botanic
Garden Meise to publish 24,121 specimen records
of endemic plants from the Congo basin countries
of Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo dating from 1890 to 2014.

Leptoderris congolensis (De Wild.) Dunn (FABACEAE)- Photo CC BYNC-2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/36517976@N06/3710999962

Watervogels - Wintering waterbirds in Flanders,Belgium, contains ‘23 winters of waterbird counts’,
as Peter Desmet from Research Institute for Natureand Forest (INBO) describes in this blog post. The
product of a long-term effort to assess and monitor
the size, distribution and trends of the region’s
wintering waterbird populations, the dataset
comprises nearly 640,000 observations of 170
species from 1991 to the present.

Aug 2011

BRAZIL
Two major institutes specializing in the biodiversityof the Brazilian Amazon region have publisheddatasets through GBIF, associated with the launchof the new data portal from GBIF’s national nodein Brazil (see New Portals below). The National
Institute for Amazon Research (INPA), based in
Manaus, shared more than 250,000 plant records
from its herbarium dating between 1846 and 2008.
The Goeldi Museum of Pará, based in Belém,published over 25,000 records of Amazon fish
specimens, 23,000 reptile records, and 20,000
records from its bird collection as well as several
collections of invertebrates.

no. 42 Dec 2014

from an environmental protection project that relies
on citizen observations of the Rhineland-Pfalz
region’s local flora and fauna.

PORTUGALGBIF Portugal has endorsed two new datasets. The
first includes more than 30,000 records from theInsect Collection of the National Museum of Natural
History and Science of the University of Lisbon.
Meanwhile, the first botanical collection from theMuseu de História Natural, Universidade do Portocomprises more than 7,500 occurrences of mosses,
liverworts and hornworts—a collection gathered by
61 different individuals dating back to 1837.
read more
GBIF-PT release on Universidade do PortodatasetGBIF-PT release on University of Lisbon
dataset

UNITED STATES

Basileuterus flaveolus - Photo CC BY-SA-2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dariosanches/4301809987

CHINA
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has published
new botanical datasets from five Chinese herbariain Lushan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Guangxi, and Jiangsu,
adding more than 360,000 plant records andsignificantly increasing the geographic coverage ofdata from China.

VertNet has assisted the Denver Botanic Gardens
in publishing two new datasets from the Southern
Rocky Mountains. 10,000 records come frompreserved and documented mycological specimens
in the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi, while theKathryn Kalmbach Herbarium adds a collection ofover 56,000 vascular plant specimens.
VertNet also helped another first-time publisher,
Ohio University, publish more than 2,200
occurrences drawn from its Invertebrate
Paleontology Collection, which contains Late
Ordovician-era fossils from formerly shallow marine
habitats near Cincinnati.

DENMARKDanBIF led the digitization and publication of aunique dataset from the Natural History Museumof Denmark of birds fallen at Danish lighthouses
between 1883 and 1939. The 1,200 occurrences
digitized thus far include both publishedobservations and specimens collected at the
Lodbjerg and Hanstholm lighthouses on the Jutland
peninsula in western Denmark.

GERMANYPOLLICHIA, the Palatinate Society for Natural
History and Landscape Conservation, working with
GBIF Germany, has published more than 180,000
occurrences from ArtenFinder. This dataset draws

Astragalus bisulcatus - Photo CC BY-SA-2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/4001370498

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GBitsAROUND THE NETWORK
Ibero-American data quality
workshop, Colombia

Photo courtesy of SIB Colombia

Twenty-five participants from six Ibero-Americancountries attended the data quality workshop heldfrom 18-21 November at the Andes University in
Bogotá, Colombia. During this workshop, diverse
presentations and practical sessions covered
data quality conceptual issues, georeferencing
and point–radius method as well as the use oftaxonomic and geographical validation tools andother software.
“For Uruguay, the workshop provided a deeply
rich experience for sharing and learning aboutbiodiversity data quality tools and methods,”
said Andrés Carvajales, Ministerio de Vivienda,
Ordenamiento Territorial y Medio Ambiente deUruguay, after the workshop. “Getting to know how
other countries have met their needs in terms of
biodiversity information and data quality will mostsurely be helpful in designing and putting together
our country’s national Biodiversity Information
System.” Uruguay recently rejoined GBIF as a Voting
Participant country.
Co-funded through GBIF’s 2014 capacity
enhancement support programme, the workshop is
expected to lead to the creation of an interest groupfor data quality that will support the integration of
the Latin American region, and will closely follow
the global discussion on data quality led by GBIF
and TDWG.

........

National node for Brazil launched a
new data portal
The GBIF national node for Brazil, SiBBr, launched a
new data and information portal on 24 November.
The portal was developed through a mentoring
project, supported by GBIF core funds, between
SiBBr and its partner organization in Colombia,
SiB Colombia. It included collaboration with
Canadensys, a GBIF Associate Participant, which
supported Brazil in re-using the tools behind its
data explorer providing digital access to Canada’s
natural history collections.
The SiBBr portal enables users to explore data bothfrom collections published by Brazilian institutions(see Data Publishing above) and data about
Brazilian biodiversity published by institutions fromother countries and ‘repatriated’ through the GBIF
global infrastructure.
The launch in Brasilia was associated with aworkshop on best practices in managing anddigitizing biological collections, with presentations
from, among others, iDigBio, Digitarium (Finland)and GBIF Secretariat

New national biodiversity portal
released by GBIF Spain
GBIF Spain released its new national biodiversity
data portal on 28 November during an event at
Real Jardín Botánico-CSIC in Madrid. The newsite provides free access to more than 10 million

GBIF Spain new national biodiversity data portal

biodiversity records from 69 Spanish institutions
and projects as well as nearly another million
66Aug 2011

records of biodiversity in Spain published byinstitutions abroad.
The new GBIF Spain site builds on an open-source
system originally developed by the Atlas of Living
Australia (ALA), and represents the first of several
results expected from this year’s collaborations
across the GBIF network.
read more
New GBIF-ES data portal
News release

GBIF executive secretary at iDigBio
Executive secretary Donald Hobern offered remarks
on improving data quality and data citation in
October at the iDigBio Summit IV.
watch
Video: Donald Hobern at iDigBio Summit

GBIF DATA IN USE

no. 42 Dec 2014

Researchers describe GBIF and how community
standards promoted through the GBIF network
could be used to support the development of anational Russian Biodiversity Database that would
aggregate and unify biodiversity data at a national
level.
Jones, T. M., et al. 2014. Trends in access of plantbiodiversity data revealed by Google Analytics.
Biodiversity Data Journal.
Using Google Analytics, the authors analyzed thedigital presence of plant biodiversity data provided
by 15 different sites, among which GBIF.org. The
knowledge drawn from this analysis provides
metrics about usability, design, and possible
future development within biodiversity informatics
Biodiversity Data Journal.
Li G. Q., et al. 2014. Mapping the Global Potential
Geographical Distribution of Black Locust (Robinia
Pseudoacacia L.) Using Herbarium Data and a
Maximum Entropy Model. Forests.

The Secretariat maintains a programme to monitor
use of GBIF-mediated data in scientific literature.
The following peer-reviewed articles represent
some recent highlights.
Burkhards, U., et al. 2014. The Edaphobase projectof GBIF-Germany – New online soil-zoological data
warehouse. Applied Soil Ecology.
Introduction of the Edaphobase, a non-commercial
data warehouse on soil organisms integrated in the
GBIF network. The Edaphobase combines data on
taxonomy, zoogeography and ecology. It currently
focuses on Germany.

Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) - Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentbreillat/4641237419

Researchers used over 30,000 GBIF-mediatedoccurrence records and records from Chinese
Virtual Herbarium to predict the potential
distribution of Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia),
a tree species that is both of high economic valueand highly invasive.
Meseguer, A. et al. 2014. Integrating Fossils,
Phylogenies, and Niche Models into Biogeography
to reveal ancient evolutionary history: the Case ofHypericum (Hypericaceae). Systematic Biology.

Brown centipede (Chilopoda: Lithobius spec.). Photo CC BY-SA 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gbohne/7272889354

Ivanova, N. V., et al. 2014. Approaches toDevelopment of Common Information Resource on
Species Biodiversity. Mathematical Biology andBioinformatics.

The authors introduce a new approach to historicalbiogeography that incorporates temporal, spatial,and environmental information provided by thefossil record. To illustrate the effectiveness of thisnew biogeographic model, they reconstructed
the biogeographic history of Hypericum using
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GBitsdistribution data provided by GBIF.org among othersources.
Pappalardo, P., et al. 2014. The Location, strength,
and mechanisms behind marine biogeographic
boundaries of the east coast of North America.
Ecography.

Silva, D.P., et al. 2014. Using Ecological Niche
Models and Niche Analyses to UnderstandSpeciation Patterns: The Case of Sister Neotropcial
Orchid Bees. PLoS ONE.

Using almost 1,800 GBIF-mediated occurrencesof benthic species, the authors compiled a
database with geographic ranges of benthic
marine invertebrates along the east coast of North
America. They identified sites with high frequenciesof range boundaries and identified possible factorsthat could explain their narrow geographical areas.
Savage, J. et al. 2014. Elevational shifts, biotic
homogenization and time lags in vegetation change
during 40 years of climate warming. Ecography.

Eulaema polycroma - Photo CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/adrian-afonso/3357270387

The authors tested the role of ecological niche
differentiation on the divergence between orchidbees (Eulaema and Eufriesea) from the Amazon and
Atlantic forests using distributional data accessed
through GBIF and other sources. Their findings
confirm the current taxonomic treatment of these
species as distinct valid species, and identify new
areas in need of future surveys.
Van Erp, M. et al. 2014. Georeferencing AnimalSpecimen Dataset. Transaction in GIS.

Wildflowers, southern Quebec - Photo CC BY-ND 2.0
https://www.flickr.com/photos/off-the-road/14799808620

Are distribution shifts of species towards higher
elevations climate-driven? To test the impact
of global warming on species distribution, theauthors used a repeat survey of semi-permanent
vegetation plots in montane protected area insouthern Québec, Canada, and overlaid climate
data and GBIF-mediated occurrence records ineastern North America. It appears that elevational
distribution shifts, biodiversity change, and biotic
homogenization over the past four decades havebeen consistent with predictions based on climate
warming, although the relatively slow rate ofchange suggests time lags in biotic response to
climate change.

Using domain knowledge about species
geographical distribution from GBIF.org,
researchers developed an automatic georeferencing
approach. In this article, they demonstrate how theaddition of external domain knowledge increases
the accuracy of the georeferencing process overmethods that solely focus on the analysis ofgeographical information. This new approach has
been realized in a prototype tested at Naturalis.

EVENTS
Meetings and conferences
Third Plenary meeting of the Intergovernmental
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
12 January 2015, Bonn, Germany
Data Sharing, Data Standards, and Demystifying the IPT
13 January 2015, Gainesville, Fla., USA, and Ottawa,
CanadaAAAS 2015 Annual Meeting – Innovations,
Information, and Imaging
12-16 Febrary 2015, San Jose, Calif., USA

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Aug 2011

no. 42 Dec 2014

Black Listing Meeting
1-4 March 2015, Leipzig, Germany
RDA/US 5th Research Data Alliance Plenary
9-11 March 2015, San Diego, Calif., USA
EU BON and CETAF joint informatics meeting
17-20 March 2015, Joensuu, Finland
Africa Rising: Mobilising Biodiversity Data for
Sustainable Development
24-26 March 2015, Cape Town, South Africa

GBIF Vision A world in which biodiversity information is freely and universallyavailable for science, society, and a sustainable future.
GBIF Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15
DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark
http://www.gbif.org/

Tel    +45 35 32 14 70
Fax   +45 35 32 14 80
Email info@gbif.org
Gbits Archive http://www.gbif.org/newsroom/newsletter

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