The Governing Board meetings enable GBIF participants to make collective decisions on all matters related to GBIF. There are voting and associated participants; Belgium is a voting partner. The 19th GBIF Governing Board took place in Lillehammer, Norway from 16 to 21 September 2012.
The Governing Board decided on future working priorities, voted for the new chairs for committees of budget, nodes and sciences, and exchanged information on the informatics update and achievements of the nodes.
The future priorities will be:
- 1) Large‐scale data for biodiversity monitoring and assessment
As data‐science interface, GBIF will support large-scale biodiversity monitoring and assessments.
This will help the work of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and national assessments.
- 2) Data to support research and responses relating to Invasive Alien Species
GBIF is involved in a programme called the Global Invasive Alien Species Information Partnership (GIASIP) and will provide data and software support related to the monitoring of invasive alien species.
- 3) Global distribution data for plants
GBIF will mobilise herbarium and vegetation survey data as well as national plant species lists in order to support the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) and explores the concept of delivering a World Flora Online (WFO) by 2020.
- 4) Tools to support 21st century taxonomy
GBIF wishes to include more taxonomic information as experts reviews, publications of species names and classifications as well as more type material information.
- 5) Global cyber‐infrastructure for all biodiversity information
GBIF will collaborate closer with other initiatives that also publish online biodiversity data (e.g. Catalogue of Life, Encyclopedia Of Life, Biodiversity Heritage Library, Consortium for the Barcode of Life, National Ecological Observatory Network, DataONE, LifeWatch, International Long Term Ecological Research, etc.) as they face similar informatics challenges and an exchange of best practices will enhance the overall effort.
Together with the Governing Board, a one-day Science Symposium was organised and focused on the use of GBIF data in scientific studies.
During the symposium the GBIF Ebbe Nielson Prize had been handed out to Nathan Swenson (Michigan State University) for his work ‘The distribution and diversity of woody plant function on continental scales’. The nine science presentations showed how GBIF data can contribute to various studies ranging from climate change impact to biodiversity in dead wood.
- Note that a new GBIF web portal will be launched early next year where the use of GBIF enabled biodiversity data in peer-reviewed journal will be visible.
During this meeting, Belgium was represented by:
François Guissart (Belspo), Head of the Belgian delegationAndré Heughebaert (Belgian Biodiversity Platform), National node manager.
More information about the meeting.
The presentations can be downloaded online.
Belgian data portal managed by André Heughebaert.