Annual event about the collective work in the creation of data to Describe life

🎉 In 2026, the Biodiversity Heritage Library turns 20! For two decades, BHL has brought together libraries, museums, herbaria, and research institutions worldwide to make biodiversity literature free...

Annual event about the collective work in the creation of data to Describe life

Background: Natural history collections are foundational infrastructure for biodiversity science, but the global geography of specimen custody—where specimens are housed relative to where they were co...

There are a multitude of biodiversity informatics projects, datasets, databases and initiatives at the global level, and many more at regional, national, and sometimes local levels. In such a complex landscape, it can be unclear how different elements relate to each other. Based on a high-level review of global and European-level elements, we present a map of the biodiversity informatics landscape. This is a first attempt at identifying key datasets/databases and data services, and mapping them in a way that can be used to identify the links, gaps and redundancies in the landscape. While the map is predominantly focused on elements with a global scope, the sub-global focus at the European-level was incorporated in the map in order to demonstrate how a regional network such as the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON) can usefully contribute to connecting some of the nodes within the landscape. We identify 74 elements, and find that the informatics landscape is complex in terms of the characteristics and diversity of these elements, and that there is high variability in their level of connectedness. Overall, the landscape is highly connected, with one element boasting 28 connections. The average "degrees of separation" between elements is low, and the landscape is deemed relatively robust to failures since there is no single point that information flows through. Examples of possible effort duplication are presented, and the inclusion of five policy-level elements in the map helps illustrate how informatics products can contribute to global processes that define and direct political targets. Beyond simply describing the existing landscape, this map will support a better understanding of the landscape’s current structure and functioning, enabling responsible institutions to establish or strengthen collaborations, work towards avoiding effort duplication, and facilitate access to the biodiversity data, information and knowledge required to support effective decision-making, in the context of comparatively limited funding for biodiversity knowledge and conservation. To support this, we provide the input matrix and code that created this map as supplementary materials, so that readers can more closely examine the links in the landscape, and edit the map to suit their own purposes.

This second issue of the bulletin summarizes two land surface dynamics during the first half of the year 2014 in Europe: the snow and the vegetation phenology.

De Vlaamse Vegetatiedatabank INBOVEG is een toepassing die werd opgezet als een verzamelplaats voor vegetatie-opnames en maakt deze beschikbaar voor toekomstig gebruik. INBOVEG ondersteunt twee soorten opnames: BioHab-opnames (protocol van Natura 2000-monitoring) en de klassieke relevés. De klassieke relevé kan op zichzelf staan, kan een element van een verzameling zijn of een element van een keten waarbij het verband wordt gebruikt om informatie te geven over de relatieve positie binnen een reeks. Ruime selectie- en exportfuncties tot en met analysetools zijn beschikbaar gemaakt, net als gestandaardiseerde lijsten van soorten, habitats, levensvormen, schalen etc. Originele waarnemingen worden bewaard en een volledige geschiedenis van opeenvolgende identificaties wordt opgeslagen.

Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment.[1] Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer a musician, composer and former professor of communication studies at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) with the help of his team there[2] as part of the World Soundscape Project. The original WSP team included Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, Bruce Davies and Peter Huse, among others. The first study produced by the WSP was titled The Vancouver Soundscape. This innovative study raised the interest of researchers and artists worldwide, creating enormous growth in the field of acoustic ecology. In 1993, the members of the by now large and active international acoustic ecology community formed the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.[3]

The Belgian Network for DNA Barcoding (or BeBoL for Belgian Barcode of Life project) aims at establishing a research network that provides an integrated and multidisciplinary molecular systematic and DNA barcoding task force. Its role is to: