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ESF proposal “Citizens Monitoring Biodiversity” recommended for funding

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The ESF networking proposal: “Citizens Monitoring Biodiversity (CMD)”, a combined EDIT/PESI/LifeWatch initiative (EDIT C3.2.5), was recommended for funding by the ESF Standing Committee for Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences (LESC). Out of 112 eligible proposals in all scientific fields, 20 were recommended for submission for funding to ESF Member Organisations in the course of 2009.

The eventual aim of the project is to involve organisations of naturalists, such as bird watchers and botanists in Europe-wide monitoring of biodiversity. As a first important step, the various groups should agree as much as possible in standards regarding the names of organisms, as well as on observation metadata and monitoring schemes. PESI would play an important role in providing taxonomic standards. The results will be beneficial for both the naturalist community and for scientists and researchers making use of data collected by volunteers.

LifeWatch Services Survey now on-line

Dear colleagus,

you can fill in the online LifeWatch Services survey: http://surveys.healthgrid.org/index.php?sid=41548.

Through this survey, the LifeWatch development team will determine which services its future users find the most important. These services will then be developed with priority. You can help them shape LifeWatch by taking the time to fill in the survey.

 

LifeWatch

You may or you may not be familiar with the European FP7-ESFRI project "LifeWatch, e-science and technology infrastructure for biodiversity research and observatories" (http://www.lifewatch.eu). LifeWatch is now one year into its preparatory phase, and in the next decade, LifeWatch will construct and bring into operation the facilities, hardware, software and governance structures for all aspects of biodiversity research.


In order to make sure LifeWatch will live up the expectations it is important to collect as many suggestions and contributions from future users of the new infrastructure. For this reason LIFEWATCH is conducting an online survey.

Questions deal mainly with the LifeWatch "Services" and all the features LifeWatch could offer.

species uncovered

PESI featured in the last MarBEF newsletter. MarBEF is one of the Networks of Excellence funded by the EU, and is regarded, together with EDIT, as one of the parent projects of PESI.

pesi

Full reference: de Jong, Y.; Costello, M.; Appeltans, W.; Nash, R. (2008). PESI: Pan-European Species-directories Infrastructure. MarBEF Newsletter 8: 33-34

Download full text: http://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/141373.pdf

Cooperation with EEA

On February 9, 2009, Yde de Jong and Louis Boumans of PESI WP1 met with Sabine Roscher, data manager of the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/BD) in Paris. The key activities of the ETC/BD are inter alia to support to the EU Nature Directives (e.g. Natura 2000 and Article 17 reporting) and to develop biodiversity-related indicators. In a very cooperative atmosphere, we exchanged information about the data flow at the Topic Centre and the ambitions of the PESI project.
It was agreed that the Topic Centre will provide PESI the most up-to-date versions of species lists of the annexes of the Nature Directives. PESI will use these for cross-validation against the pan-European checklists of Fauna Europaea, ERMS and E+M PlantBase and provide a first review of the taxon names figuring in the Annexes of the Birds and Habitats Directives as soon as possible (ultimately within one year). PESI will provide the Topic Centre with downloads of the pan-European checklists as soon as new versions of these become available. For Fauna Europaea this is expected to be in June or July of this year.

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