SiBBr: Envisioning the spatial distribution of Brazilian biodiversity records

Abstract

Habitat degradation and fragmentation has driven much of the extinction process of current species. Biodiversity loss compromises ecosystems goods and socioeconomic activities, and can be managed through holistic conservation policies that prioritize where and how to spend efforts and resources. Hence an easy-to-use information tool that crosses biodiversity data with geographical locations is key for the development of effective conservation policies. The Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBr), a government initiative and the Brazilian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), aim to consolidate biodiversity primary data in one platform, making it available for researchers and policymakers over the internet through several tools to facilitate and disseminate the analysis and use of biodiversity data.Because macroecological or biodiversity-related phenomena usually occur in geographically delimited spots, showing the correlation of factors that favor their establishment, spatial tools to test and describe such geospatial relationships are required. Unfortunately, most of methods to evaluate gains and losses of biodiversity and to establish future scenarios require specialized skills with GIS software, combined with the knowledge of how to apply conservation methodologies with this tool.

A survey of biodiversity informatics: Concepts, practices, and challenges

“…GBIF acts as a central registry and aggregator for datasets published by its national and organizational nodes using the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) [229]. The publishing workflow includes the following steps: (i) mapping the internal representation of biodiversity data to DwC and extracting it; (ii) adding EML metadata describing the biodiversity data; (iii) packaging both EML metadata and DwCformatted data to a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A); (iv) GBIF and national biodiversity aggregators, such as the Brazilian Biodiversity Information System (SiBBr) [105,22], harvest DwC-A and ingest them into their databases. This process is illustrated in Figure 3.…”