Priorities for big biodiversity data

Stephenson, P.J.; Brooks, Thomas M.; Butchart, Stuart H. M.; Fegraus, Eric; Geller, Gary N.; Höft, Robert; Hutton, J. M.; Kingston, Naomi; Long, Barney; McRae, Louise

doi:10.1002/fee.1473

Cited by 34 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Importantly, we must ensure data are made available to local environmental stakeholders and decision-makers in forms that meet their needs (see e.g. Montambault et al 2015;Stephenson et al 2017). Our proposal focuses on native island forests, but some of the proposed experimental design and protocols can be extended to other habitats as well.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We then propose and outline a Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS) that is based on permanent forest plots, consistent methods, and selected indicator groups of organisms. Our proposal adds to recent calls for enhanced biodiversity monitoring (Schmeller et al 2017;Stephenson et al 2017;Walters and Scholes 2017) and implies cooperation between environmental agencies responsible for the management of protected areas, and scientists working on the long-term dynamics of biodiversity in native island forests. Our main aim is to propose scientific standards for a global monitoring scheme of spatial and temporal ecological changes in native island forests.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Stephenson et al 2017). Exceptions include the Kasuya Research forest (LTER-EAP-JP-07) and a small number of island forest plots within the CTFS-ForestGEO initiative (http://www.ctfs.si.edu/plots /summa ry; Anderson-Teixeira et al 2015).…”

Section: Ongoing Inventory and Monitoring Initiatives Within Oceanic mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Islands harbour evolutionary and ecologically unique biota, which are currently disproportionately threatened by a multitude of anthropogenic factors, including habitat loss, 2568 Biodivers Conserv (2018) 27:2567-2586 1 3 invasive species and climate change. Native forests on oceanic islands are important refugia for endemic species, many of which are rare and highly threatened. Long-term monitoring schemes for those biota and ecosystems are urgently needed: (i) to provide quantitative baselines for detecting changes within island ecosystems, (ii) to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation and management actions, and (iii) to identify general ecological patterns and processes using multiple island systems as repeated 'natural experiments'. In this contribution, we call for a Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS) for monitoring the remaining native island forests, using bryophytes, vascular plants, selected groups of arthropods and vertebrates as model taxa. As a basis for the GIMS, we also present new, optimized monitoring protocols for bryophytes and arthropods that were developed based on former standardized inventory protocols. Effective inventorying and monitoring of native island forests will require: (i) permanent plots covering diverse ecological gradients (e.g. elevation, age of terrain, anthropogenic disturbance); (ii) a multiple-taxa approach that is based on standardized and replicable protocols; (iii) a common set of indicator taxa and community properties that are indicative of native island forests' welfare, building on, and harmonized with existing sampling and monitoring efforts; (iv) capacity building and training of local researchers, collaboration and continuous dialogue with local stakeholders; and (v) long-term commitment by funding agencies to maintain a global network of native island forest monitoring plots.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We envision WI as a long-lasting solution to a problem currently faced by camera trap and other passive sensor data, not as a regular science or conservation project. Given that the amount of wildlife and environmental data is growing at an unprecedented rate (Farley et al 2018, Stephenson et al 2017), WI's successand the success of existing and new shared data platformsis strongly tied to its permanence, growth and continuity. Pathways to sustainability need to be found that go beyond external philanthropic funding.…”

Section: The Future Of Wildlife Insights and Other Shared Data Platformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wildlife Insights: A Platform to Maximize the Potential of Camera Trap and Other Passive Sensor Wildlife Data for the Planet

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SummaryWildlife is an essential component of all ecosystems. Most places in the globe do not have local, timely information on which species are present or how their populations are changing. With the arrival of new technologies, camera traps have become a popular way to collect wildlife data. However, data collection has increased at a much faster rate than the development of tools to manage, process and analyse these data. Without these tools, wildlife managers and other stakeholders have little information to effectively manage, understand and monitor wildlife populations. We identify four barriers that are hindering the widespread use of camera trap data for conservation. We propose specific solutions to remove these barriers integrated in a modern technology platform called Wildlife Insights. We present an architecture for this platform and describe its main components. We recognize and discuss the potential risks of publishing shared biodiversity data and a framework to mitigate those risks. Finally, we discuss a strategy to ensure platforms like Wildlife Insights are sustainable and have an enduring impact on the conservation of wildlife.

show abstract

“…One opportunistic way to improve data coverage is to mobilize more data from species monitoring projects and field observation campaigns (Stephenson et al, ; Proença et al, in press). This includes citizen science projects (Chandler et al, in press; Dickinson et al, ) which can have several advantages over traditional field surveys (Fig.…”

Section: Data and Tools For Building Ebv Data Productsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) of species distribution and abundance at a global scale

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Much biodiversity data is collected worldwide, but it remains challenging to assemble the scattered knowledge for assessing biodiversity status and trends. The concept of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) was introduced to structure biodiversity monitoring globally, and to harmonize and standardize biodiversity data from disparate sources to capture a minimum set of critical variables required to study, report and manage biodiversity change. Here, we assess the challenges of a 'Big Data' approach to building global EBV data products across taxa and spatiotemporal scales, focusing on species distribution and abundance. The majority of currently available data on species distributions derives from incidentally reported observations or from surveys where presence-only or presence-absence data are sampled repeatedly with standardized protocols. Most abundance data come from opportunistic population counts or from population time series using standardized protocols (e.g. repeated surveys of the same population from single or multiple sites). Enormous complexity exists in integrating these heterogeneous, multi-source data sets across space, time, taxa and different sampling methods. Integration of such data into global EBV data products requires correcting biases introduced by imperfect detection and varying sampling effort, dealing with different spatial resolution and extents, harmonizing measurement units from different data sources or sampling methods, applying statistical tools and models for spatial inter-or extrapolation, and quantifying sources of uncertainty and errors in data and models. To support the development of EBVs by the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), we identify 11 key workflow steps that will operationalize the process of building EBV data products within and across research infrastructures worldwide. These workflow steps take multiple sequential activities into account, including identification and aggregation of various raw data sources, data quality control, taxonomic name matching and statistical modelling of integrated data. We illustrate these steps with concrete examples from existing citizen science and professional monitoring projects, including eBird, the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring network, the Living Planet Index and the Baltic Sea zooplankton monitoring. The identified workflow steps are applicable to both terrestrial and aquatic systems and a broad range of spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales. They depend on clear, findable and accessible metadata, and we provide an overview of current data and metadata standards. Several challenges remain to be solved for building global EBV data products: (i) developing tools and models for combining heterogeneous, multi-source data sets and filling data gaps in geographic, temporal and taxonomic coverage, (ii) integrating emerging methods and technologies for data collection such as citizen science, sensor networks, DNA-based techniques and satellite remote sensing, (iii) solv...

show abstract

Priorities for big biodiversity data

Cited by 34 publications

References 12 publications

Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota

Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota

Wildlife Insights: A Platform to Maximize the Potential of Camera Trap and Other Passive Sensor Wildlife Data for the Planet

Building essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) of species distribution and abundance at a global scale

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About