Completeness of digital accessible knowledge of the plants of Brazil and priorities for survey and inventory

Abstract

Aim Biodiversity information is the focus of major initiatives aimed at assembling large-scale primary-data documentation ('digital accessible knowledge') of the distribution of life on Earth. Recent efforts within Brazil have assembled a massive amount of such documentation for Brazilian plants, which we analyse in this study. Our aim is to identify areas representing gaps in current knowledge; these gaps can guide future botanical exploration and discovery in Brazil. Location Brazil.Methods We assessed angiosperm inventories across Brazil at diverse spatial scales using statistics that summarize inventory completeness. In particular, we assess the completeness of geographical knowledge of Brazilian floras as measured in terms of geographical distance and climatic difference from welldocumented sites.Results Spatial knowledge of Brazilian angiosperms is very unevenly distributed: well-known sites are concentrated in eastern and southern regions, whereas the remainder of the country remains poorly documented. Worse still, in many regions, areas lacking detailed botanical documentation coincide with areas of intense habitat destruction, such that many such sites will never be documented scientifically.Main conclusions This study illustrates how biodiversity survey and inventory efforts can be guided by existing knowledge. That is, to the extent that existing biodiversity knowledge is made digital and openly available, and to the extent that information is sufficiently comprehensive and informative, spatial summaries of completeness such as that presented here offer clear and strategic directions for maximizing the yield of new knowledge from any de novo field efforts.

Completeness of Digital Accessible Knowledge of the Plants of Ghana

“…Field sampling efforts should focus in areas identified herein as both environmentally different and geographically distant from wellknown sites. Such information exists for only a few countries, such as Brazil (Sousa-Baena et al 2013, Idohou et al 2015, Koffi et al 2015. This kind of information is important for strategic national policy (Soberón and Peterson, 2009), and is an important step towards meeting the Aichi Targets 3 and national commitments to the Clearing House Mechanism of the Convention on Biological Diversity 4 .…”

“…Primary biodiversity data have myriad applications, providing an information base that is crucial to addressing challenges of sustainable development and decision-making about natural resources and environments (Chapman, 2005;Sousa-Baena et al, 2013). Digital Accessible Knowledge (DAK) regarding biodiversity comprises primary data records that are in digital format, Figure 1.…”

“…Graphs showing accumulation of records of Ghanaian plants through time (a) years, and (b) during the year. accessible globally without cost, and integrated with the broader university of such data (Sousa-Baena et al, 2013). Some exciting examples of uses of DAK exist, including for prioritizing areas for conservation, assessing geographic potential for species invasions, and understanding ecological and evolutionary processes (e.g., Mora et al, 2008;Nakamura & Soberón, 2008).…”

Botanical Sampling Gaps Across the Cameroon Mountains

“…We first rescaled values of each environmental variable to the overall range of the variable as (x i -x min ) / (x maxx min ), where x i is the particular observed value in question, such that each environmental variable varied only 0-1. We calculated the minimum Euclidean distance in the two-dimensional climate space to any well-sampled area (Sousa-Baena et al 2014). Finally, these environmental distances were imported into QGIS, and linked back to the random point shape-file.…”

Highway Infrastructure, Protected Areas, and Orchid Bee Distribution and Conservation in the Brazilian Amazon

“…Efforts by organizations such as the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) in recent years are emblematic in making millions of species occurrence records digitally available. GBIF serves >6.4 × 108 occurrence records for >1.6 × 106 species, but it is an ongoing effort to fill gaps, address biases and make the data more complete [1] [2]. Among the groups least represented in GBIF are insects (<8% of the total set of records), despite their high diversity and ecological importance.…”