Managing South African biodiversity research data: Meeting the challenges of rapidly developing information technology

Abstract

New developments in the funding requirements of biodiversity science as well as rapidly developing information technology warrant a sharper focus on the way in which biodiversity data are managed. We propose that an opportunity presents itself to develop a specific set of informatics skills among a new class of data analysts in the biodiversity science community. Our consideration of capacity development specifically emphasises the need for conceptual rigour, compliance with technical data standards and the culture of data publication or data sharing. There is a pressing need for data stewardship skills and positions in the South African biodiversity science community. We describe previous and current initiatives that may help to provide the context of, and develop skills and capacity for, effective management or stewardship of biodiversity research data. The overlapping competencies of data stewardship, data curation and data preservation include: processes and activities related to the organization and integration of data collected from various sources, annotation of the data, and publication and presentation of the data such that the value of the data is maintained over time, and the data remains available for reuse and preservation. 1 The role of the data steward can be distilled into the fundamental principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (the FAIR principles). 1 From where do biodiversity data originate? During the last 5 years, a significant component of funding for South African biodiversity science has been channelled through the Foundational Biodiversity Information Programme (FBIP). 2 The FBIP is funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) and administered by the National Research Foundation and the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI). The FBIP recognises the importance of biodiversity, not only in the narrower sense of a particular discipline of scientific research (e.g. taxonomy, systematics or ecology), but also in the broader context of the relevance of biodiversity to society. Four large, collaborative FBIP projects have been funded. These projects focus on marine biodiversity (the Seakeys Project), the effect of habitat fragmentation on the faunal diversity of Eastern Cape forests, filling gaps in biodiversity information to support decisions about the exploitation of shale gas in the Karoo (the Biogaps Project), and camera trapping of mammals to assess the status of species and populations inside and outside protected areas (the Snapshot Safari Project). In 2016, 20 smaller FBIP projects were undertaken to investigate a variety of subjects, including bat monitoring in the Kruger National Park, bryozoan e-taxonomy, and a number of applied projects, e.g. the use of polychaetes as bait, and a survey of earthworms and their use in vermicomposting. The FBIP explicitly requires researchers to generate and submit research data characterised as species occurrences, species attributes or population abundance records, or devel...

Collating biodiversity occurrence data for conservation

“…Disparate data are collected by different people (Alves et al, 2018) using different approaches (Berkley et al, 2001;Heidorn, 2008) to answer different questions, and limited human resources are dedicated to curating conservation data (Heidorn, 2008). In South Africa, one limiting area is data cleaning (Coetzer and Hamer, 2019), which is the correction or removal of inaccurate data and standardization of formatting to enable data to be more useful. However, some data management support and capacity building is being provided by GBIF nodes (Parker-Allie et al, 2021).…”

Drowning in data, thirsty for information and starved for understanding: A biodiversity information hub for cooperative environmental monitoring in South Africa

“…For example, despite the clear need and importance of a national data pipeline being recognised in the past, a national system is yet to be developed in SA. (Coetzer and Hamer, 2019). National-level requirements, like the need for metadata and data collection, generation, management, dissemination and reuse of standards for biodiversity information, still require more attentive resolve.…”

An open access geospatial database for the sub-Antarctic Prince Edward Islands

“…30,31,53 The South African government rightly recognises the need to encourage better data sharing practices through ratification of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure Act (Act 54 of 2003). There are numerous advantages of data sharing 33,53 and successful practices have been realised by several scientific disciplines [34][35][36]54 . The increasing demand for data sharing has sparked the emergence of numerous online data repositories such as Figshare 55 , Mendeley Data 56,57 , and Zenodo 58 .…”

“…Globally, the focus on data sharing practices or 'open science' is increasing 30,31 and has already transpired with specific African 32,33 and South(ern) African perspectives. The push from government (through the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure Act, 54 of 2003), funding agencies, publishers, and institutions and for improved data availability 33 , have encouraged sharing practices by several scientific fields, amongst others, ecology 34,35 , geomatics 36 , and soil science 37 . Therefore, a geospatial database for both of the Prince Edward Islands is provided here, which includes topographical data (e.g.…”