Biodiversity information constitutes an important source of knowledge for many disciplines. For example, it is fundamental to supporting conservation and for understanding the potential impacts of climate change. External and internal factors call for an urgent modernization of the production and accessibility of these data, information and knowledge. These external factors include the need for biodiversity data to support decisions for regional and taxon focused conservation. Internal factors are a consequence of the opportunities of the digital revolution, and the need to reconcile the escalating volume of data with the requirement to curate it by a fixed number of taxonomists. The pro-iBiosphere project has been launched for a period of two years (September 1st, 2012 to August 31st, 2014), with the goal of addressing technical and semantic interoperability challenges and preparing the ground for the creation of a system for intelligent management of biodiversity knowledge which will improve the present system of taxonomic literature. ... [Information of the supplier]
The pro-iBiosphere Final Event is organised by Sigma Orionis and Agentschap Plententuin Meise (Botanic Garden Meise) in collaboration with the pro-iBiosphere consortium. The purpose of the event is to present the achievements of the pro-iBiosphere project in a series of activities. The Final Event will consist of a series of activities including workshops, training, demonstrations, poster session, conference. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
BioNET is an international not-for-profit initiative dedicated to promoting taxonomy, especially in the biodiversity rich but economically poorer countries of the world. Working via local partnerships (LOOPs), BioNET strives to provide a forum for collaboration that is equally open to all taxonomists and to the other users of taxonomy. Working with partners locally and internationally, our work contributes to raising awareness of the importance of taxonomy to society, building and sharing of capacity, and meeting taxonomic needs via innovative tools and approaches. ... [Information of the supplier]
The DELTA format (DEscription Language for TAxonomy) is a flexible method for encoding taxonomic descriptions for computer processing. It has been adopted by the International Taxonomic Databases Working Group (TDWG) as a standard for data exchange. DELTA-format data can be used to produce natural-language descriptions, conventional or interactive keys, cladistic or phenetic classifications, and information-retrieval systems. ... [Information of the supplier]
Welcome to SYNTHESYS: the European Union-funded Integrated Infrastructure Initiative grant. This five year project which began in February 2004, comprises 20 European natural history museums and botanic gardens, aims to create an integrated European infrastructure for researchers in the natural sciences. SYNTHESYS is split into two activities: Access and Networking Activities. ... [Information of the supplier]
This site merges the book A Guide to Field Guides: Identifying the Natural History of North America by Diane Schmidt, Biology Librarian at the University of Illinois, and its companion Web site International Field Guides. After the publisher returned copyright to the book, the author decided to combine the two products and create a searchable database of field guides for plants, animals, and other objects in North America and around the world. Except where noted, all guides listed here were personally examined by the author. As used in this site, a field guide is a small, lightweight book used to identify plants, animals, or other objects. It is designed to be used outdoors and usually contains many illustrations, whether drawings or photographs, and limited text. Generally speaking, field guides are used by amateurs, hence the emphasis on visual identification. There are a number of different technical manuals, atlases, floras and faunas, handbooks, and keys for the use of professionals which are not listed here. ... [Information of the supplier]
ViBRANT is a European Union FP7 funded project starting in December 2010 that will support the development of virtual research communities involved in biodiversity science. Our goal is to provide a more integrated and effective framework for those managing biodiversity data on the Web. ViBRANT provides: (1) A virtual research environment (Scratchpads) where users can safely store, share and manage their research information; (2) Analytical services for users to build identification keys and phylogenetic trees; (3) A publication platform for users to automatically compile biodiversity science manuscripts from their research database; (4) A portal for users to centrally access publicly accessible biodiversity research information and literature; (5) Training, helping research communities to use these tools and services; (6) A standards compliant technical architecture that can be sustained by biodiversity research community. ... [Information of the supplier]
The i4Life Project (Indexing for Life) is to create a Virtual Research Community that will develop and harmonise the various species catalogues used by six of the world’s global biodiversity programmes using the Catalogue of Life as a yardstick. One of the great issues in biodiversity science is how to synthesize a comprehensive view of the entire biodiversity to better understand how it functions, and to model and forecast how it will respond to major anthropogenic pressures. Harmonising the differing catalogues of species is a crucial part of this synthesis and has enormous practical significance in indexing the knowledge needed to protect biodiversity. Six ‘global biodiversity programmes’, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the European Nucleotide Archive (part of INSDC), the Barcode of Life initiatives, the IUCN Red List, the new LifeWatch programme, and the Encyclopedia of Life, join in this project with the Catalogue of Life to initiate this harmonisation and to explore the full extent of species surveyed in the different programmes. The target is to enable each programme to enhance its catalogue with the assistance of the others, and to create a harmonised list for the entire set of organisms. ... [Information of the supplier]
BioSyst.EU represents European scientists dealing with topics of systematic biology. It considers itself as a collaborative counterpart to the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) where European Natural History Institutions have joined, whereas in BioSyst.EU individual scientists are to be represented via their national or regional societies. BioSyst.EU aims to provide a European platform to: a) hold joint meetings on a regular basis; b) promote research, teaching, and training in all areas of systematic biology, including phylogenetic, taxonomic, and biodiversity research; c) encourage collaboration and interchange among researchers, both individually and through their respective societies and institutions; d) coordinate national and international efforts without infringing on the autonomy of the member societies; e) encourage formation of additional national systematic societies, while continuing to represent systematists in countries still lacking formal societies and f) increase the profile and funding of systematic biology in the European parliament. ... [Information of the supplier]
ViBRANT recognised the need for a bibliography of life, i.e. a freely accessible bibliography of every taxonomic paper ever published. None of the currently available aggregators were satisfactory, so we have chosen to extend the Plazi bibliographic tool, RefBank. There are two primary reasons for this choice, first the original developer, Guido Sautter, is a partner in ViBRANT and second, RefBank contains a parsing tool that will turn Rod Page's "cryptic text strings" into structured references that can be easily transformed into any of the other conventional forms (see the Data Format Report). The bulk of RefBank's growth to date has come from ViBRANT contributed references, with 80,000 references being accumulated in the first six months of operation and another 85,000 references in the second six months. Work continues within ViBRANT to extract bibliographies from published works and parse them to generate more references. This work is to ensure that RefBank is seeded with sufficient references at launch so as to engage users. There was a significant development for RefBank in Autumn 2012 when it was the subject of a presentation and demonstration at TDWG 2013. Since when we have seen the addition of community contributed references. A more formal launch of RefBank, probably in conjunction with related ViBRANT developed tools, is planned for Summer/Autumn 2013. (http://vbrant.eu/content/communal-literature) ... [Miscellaneous as indicated]
