Building: Main Building 1st Floor
Room: Salone degli Oceani
Last modified: 2013-10-01
Abstract
Biodiversity data are crucial for improving our understanding of species distributions and threats to the environment. This is especially the case for freshwater environments that are heavily affected by the global biodiversity crisis. A huge body of data gathered by scientists and water managers is currently unavailable. Analysis of the available GBIF data for almost 50,000 species revealed that less than 1% of the 1,854 datasets (representing 7 million occurrence records) are freshwater-specific. So there is clearly an urgent need for scientists in this field to adopt good data archiving and publishing practices. BioFresh (an EU-funded Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) project) aims to build a collaborative global freshwater biodiversity data hub and to engage with a network of freshwater biodiversity researchers and data holders to publish their data on-line and make them available for integration in large-scale models and tools.
The main components of the freshwater biodiversity hub or platform (http://www.freshwaterbiodiversity.eu/) include (1) a data portal providing access to species and occurrence data, relevant shapefiles, tools and models for freshwater biodiversity researchers, (2) the Global Freshwater Biodiversity Atlas, which brings thematic freshwater biodiversity maps and related spatial data together in an interactive web map application, and (3) a resource and outreach section featuring outputs and news from the freshwater community.
Existing freshwater biodiversity-related datasets are documented in a metadatabase that allows extensive documentation, specific to datasets in this domain, while ensuring the possibility of exchanging information using the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) standard. We adopted the Darwin Core standard and GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) for publishing primary biodiversity data and produced documentation and recommendations on the required fields specific for the freshwater domain (“freshwater core”). Individual datasets can be published through the BioFresh IPT, while large institutions are encouraged to install their own IPT. These datasets are harvested for incorporation in BioFresh’s occurrence database, are supplied with data obtained through GBIF web services and linked to a taxonomic backbone based on the FADA database (Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment - http://fada.biodiversity.be/).