gbifnews03

News
Issue #3, 2005.10.01

GBIF Science Committee Seeks Nominations for 2006 Ebbe Nielsen Prize

The Ebbe Nielsen Prize will be awarded for the fifth time in 2006 to a person or small team that is demonstrating excellence in combining biodiversity informatics and biosystematic research. The Science Committee of the GBIF Governing Board seeks nominations for the Prize. See the guidelines for nomination. Nominations are due at the Secretariat by 15 December 2005.

2005 Ebbe Nielsen Prize Awarded to Pablo A. Goloboff

Computer scientist and biologist Pablo Goloboff won the $35,000 Ebbe Nielsen Prize for programs that can pinpoint regions of the world that are home to a particularly unique range of animals and plants. The Prize was presented to Dr. Goloboff at a ceremony on 18 April 2005 in conjunction with the annual GBIF Science Symposium.

Three Papers that Discuss Quality, Cleaning and Uses of Species Occurrence Data Released for Comment

Issues related to the quality of data served through the GBIF Portal are of critical importance to both data providers and data users. In an attempt to provide both data users and data providers with a better understanding of these issues, the GBIF DIGIT programme is pleased to announce the availability of three discussion papers on these topics. The three papers described below were commissioned in 2004 from Arthur Chapman by the GBIF DIGIT programme to address concerns about data quality and use. Arthur Chapman has spent over 20 years working in a number of capacities for the Australian Government, mainly in data management, information analysis, environmental modeling, development of environmental decision support systems and information presentation. He has been a member of a number of international organizations and committees involved with the utilizing biodiversity data. (For more details see: http://www.anbg.gov.au/people/chapman.arthur.html). The three papers are:

Principles of Data Quality
Data quality and errors in data are often neglected issues with environmental databases, modeling systems, GIS, decision support systems, etc. Too often, data are used uncritically without consideration of the errors contained within, and this can lead to erroneous results, misleading information, unwise environmental decisions and increased costs. The rapid increase in the exchange and availability of taxonomic and species-occurrence data has now made the consideration of the principles concerning data quality an important agenda item as users of the data begin to require more and more detail on the quality of this information. This paper expands on these issues and discusses a number of principles of data quality that should become core to the business of the natural history collections and observational communities as they release their data to the broader community.
Principles and Methods of Data Cleaning - Primary Species and Species-Occurrence Data
This document examines methods for preventing as well as detecting and cleaning errors in primary biological collections databases. It discusses guidelines, methodologies and tools that can assist the natural history collections community and the observational communities to follow best practice in digitizing, documenting and validating information. But first, it also sets out a set of simple principles that should be followed in any data cleaning exercises.
Uses of Primary Species-Occurrence Data
This paper examines uses for primary species occurrence data in research, education and in other areas of human endeavor, and provides examples from the literature of many of these uses. The paper examines not only data from labels, or from observational notes, but the data inherent in museum and herbarium collections themselves, which are long-term storage receptacles of information and data that are still largely untouched. Projects include the study of the species and their distributions through both time and space, their use for education, both formal and public, for conservation and scientific research, use in medicine and forensic studies, in natural resource management and climate change, in art, history and recreation, and for social and political use.

It is recognized that our understanding of these topics and the tools available for facilitating error checking and cleaning is rapidly evolving and as a result, GBIF sees these papers as interim discussions of the issues as they stood in 2004. We expect there will be future versions of these documents and would appreciate the data provider and user communities' input. Comments and suggestions can be submitted to: Larry Speers, Senior Programme Officer, Digitisation of Natural History Collections. E-mail: lspeers@gbif.org.

Nodes Liaison Officer has joined the GBIF Secretariat staff

Dr. Francisco "Paco" Pando accepted the position of Nodes Liaison Officer, and began working at the Secretariat as of 30 March 2005. In his role as Nodes Liaison, Dr. Pando addresses requests for assistance expressed by GBIF's Nodes. He will also be the main contact point in the Secretariat for the NODES Committee and provide overall support to the NODES Chair and Vice Chairs.

Dr. Pando is highly qualified for his new duties. He himself has been a Node Manager, for GBIF-España, and prior to that served for several years as system administrator and scientific coordinator for informatics at the Real Jardín Botanico. His other experience includes a doctorate in the taxonomy of slime molds. His dissertation included the development of a computerised taxonomic information system, and he has supervised a number of biodiversity data recording projects.

Pleased by the new GBIF appointment, Lawrence Way, Chair of the NODES Committee, said "Paco is very well respected in the biodiversity informatics community. He has a wealth of practical knowledge about all areas of GBIF's efforts, and I look forward to working with him."

The Nodes Liaison Officer will advise the Nodes on overcoming obstacles and challenges, and will provide follow-up services when a new GBIF Participant joins. He will help the Participant to take the right steps in setting up a node and establish a data provider network. Contacted today at his home in Madrid, Dr. Pando said, "I really look forward to working with and for the GBIF Nodes. I hope to foster communication and cooperation among the Nodes, and between the Nodes and the Secretariat. I feel that I can contribute to the development and success of GBIF through working closely with its Nodes."

In the longer term, Dr. Pando will advise on best practices for Nodes and aid in the development of a best practices handbook and related web site for GBIF's Participant Nodes.

GBIF was able to establish this full time position through the end of 2006 based on an additional contribution from the Danish Natural Science Research Council of 500,000 Danish kroner.

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Funds GBIF - TDWG Standards Development

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation awarded, in May, nearly $1.5 million USD to the GBIF-TDWG partnership. The project funded by this grant is designed to establish a more formal process for development and maintenance of each of the Taxonomic Databases Working Group(TDWG) standards, which are so important to the further development and successful operation of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Three contractors, the TDWG Project Team, have been appointed to work over the next two-and-a-half years to help TDWG improve its development of data standards.

Feasibility Study Funded by Moore Foundation

GBIF, in partnership with Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental (CRIA), is undertaking a study of the feasibility of establishing an Amazon Basin Biodiversity Information Facility in a project funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. There is now a TDWG Team in place, and it is working with TDWG to review and revise processes and consider the overall data architecture.

GBIF Establishing Mirror Sites on 3 Continents

In order to achieve more stable availability of the Portal and higher efficiency through parallel operation, GBIF is establishing mirror sites on other continents. These sites will initially operate a copy of the GBIF Data Portal, but will gradually increase their functions to cover indexing of the regions' data provider content and to provide support. An open call for proposals for establishing the mirror sites was made in early 2005. Eight proposals were received from GBIF Participant nodes and data providers. The main criteria for the selection were geographic differentation and the level of resources that could be offered for this project by these sites. The selected sites are in Germany, Korea and the United States, and the German site should be operational by the time of GB11.

GBIF Signs Memorandum of Cooperation with the Consortium for the Barcode of Life

On 25 February 2005, Dr. James Edwards signed, on behalf of GBIF, a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL). In addition, CBOL has become an Associate Participant in GBIF. GBIF and CBOL will work together to develop standards and protocols for data exchange that will allow connecting specimen data with barcode and other kinds of molecular data. The US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is already working with GBIF in the CBOL Databases Working Group to make this happen.

PowerPoint / Word files from the Species Banks Workshop Held in Amsterdam Are Available Online

Power Point or Word files of the talks presented during the plenary sessions of the workshop can be viewed or downloaded clicking on the title of this item or by going to "Symposia & Workshops" in the left hand menu on the GBIF Communications Portal and clicking on the title of the workshop.

GBIF Presentations Available Online

Did you miss the GBIF Science Symposium? You can now see the PowerPoint presentations here on the portal. In the left-hand menu on this portal, under "About GBIF", click on Symposia & Workshops. You will be taken to a page that lists the presentations available, and where possible, the program for the symposium.

DIGIT Seed Money Awards for 2004

In 2004, the DIGIT seed money programme awarded a total of US$737,744 to 16 digitisation projects. Using this funding, over 2.6 million specimen (including more than 50,000 types) and observational records will be added to the GBIF network. The taxonomic distribution of the awards is 7 botanical, 2 mycological, and 4 entomological collections, and one collection each for slime molds, mollusks and birds; the project investigators and their collaborators are located in 25 different countries.

ECAT Seed Money Awards for 2004

In 2004, the ECAT seed money programme awarded a total of US$501,610 to 15 taxonomic projects. Using this funding, 8 Global Species Databases, 5 geographic checklists, and 2 nomenclators will be completed. The taxonomic distribution of the awards is 15 Animalia, 11 Plantae, and 1 Protista; the project investigators and their collaborators are located in 26 different countries.

GBIF 2005-2006 Seed Money Priorities Established with the Help of E-Conferences

As part of the process of formulating priorities for the 2005-2006 requests for proposals for the GBIF seed money competitions, a discussion of priorities was carried out through e-conferences. GBIF welcomed the insights of many participants from around the world about what taxonomic groups or regional floras/faunas should be priorities for the GBIF seed money programmes. The two simultaneous e-conferences took place from 25 May through 8 June, 2005.

2005 - 2006 Requests for Proposals for GBIF Seed Money

The requests for proposals to the GBIF programmes DIGIT and ECAT were released on 28 June. ECAT preproposals were due by 15 September, and DIGIT full proposals are due 15 November. The call was for proposals focused on data needed by international initiatives such as The International Pollinators Initiative (IPI), The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), The Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) 2010 Biodiversity Target or a particular Global Species Groups Conservation Assessment.

Call for Proposals: 2005 GBIF Demonstration Project

The GBIF demo projects aim at developing applications and/or tools that utilize GBIF data in new and innovative ways. These applications are meant to be reused meaningfully with different data sets and addressing different end users. Deadline for receipt of proposals is 20 October 2005. The goal is to fund practical, useful, replicable, scalable and easy to use applications that showcase new approaches to GBIF's target audiences, and in a clear and user-friendly manner show the importance and usefulness of the GBIF concept and philosophy. The full text of the call can be found here

GBIF 2nd Workshop on Ecological Niche Modelling

GBIF together the University of Kansas Biodiversity Research Center (KU) and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), are organizing a hands-on Ecological Niche Modeling training workshop in Lawrence, Kansas from 5-9 December 2005. The workshop will total 35 hours of classroom time, and will be conducted in English. For logistic reasons, the workshop will be limited to 20 participants, who will have an academic degree in an appropriate discipline and experience with GIS and other software applications.

Articles and Documents of Interest

GBIF Third Year Review Report

An independent review has praised the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) as an essential mine of dynamic information about the species of life on earth, with the potential to return even greater value in the future. Both the Executive Summary and the Full Report can be found through these links or on CIRCA.

GBIF Literature Materials Available

The documents are A4 size and can be inserted in the GBIF Brochure. You can access them online by clicking on "Documents & History" under "About GBIF" in the left-hand menu of the GBIF Communications Portal or on the title of this news item. There, you will find Who Are GBIF's Users?, The GBIF Work Programme, The GBIF Strategic Plan, The GBIF Supplementary Fund, and Quick Guide to GBIF Biodiversity Informatics

Meetings

GBIF Governing Board 11th Meeting

Stockholm, Sweden, 10 - 15 Oct 2005. Will include initial presentation of the proposed GBIF MOU and Strategic Plan for 2007 - 2011, and demonstrations of the 2004 GBIF Demo Projects.

GBIF Governing Board 12th Meeting

Capetown, South Africa, 3 - 7 Apr 2006. Will include the Fourth GBIF Science Symposium, and consideration of the GBIF MOU and Strategic Plan for 2007 - 2011.

Becoming a GBIF data provider

Lucknow, India, 25 - 27 Jan 2006. Regional training workshop for South-East Asia. Financial support for travel costs is available normally for one attendee from each country in the region, except the host country.

DIVERSITAS Open Science Conference: Integrating biodiversity science for human well-being

Oaxaca, Mexico, 9 - 12 Nov 2005. GBIF organised Symposium 2 of this conference, entitled "Biodiversity Informatics: Acquisition, Analysis, Archiving and Applications."

GBIF News will be issued on an approximately quarterly basis by the Secretariat

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